First Edition: Nov. 17, 2023 – KFF Health News

KFF Health News:
Most States Ban Shackling Pregnant Women In Custody, Yet Many Report Being Restrained 

Ashley Denney was about seven months pregnant in 2022 when police handcuffed her during an arrest in Carroll County, Georgia. Officers shackled her even though the state bans the use of restraints on pregnant women in custody beginning at the second trimester. In early July, she said, it happened again. (Rayasam, 11/17)

KFF Health News:
Beyond Insulin: Medi-Cal Expands Patient Access To Diabetes Supplies 

June Voros sprang from her couch as a high-pitched beep warned her that she needed a quick dose of sugar. Her blood sugar was plummeting, and the beep came from a continuous glucose monitor attached to her abdomen. The small but powerful device alerts Voros when her blood sugar is dangerously high or low. (Hart, 11/17)

KFF Health News:
Congress Kicks The (Budget) Can Down The Road. Again. 

Congress narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown for the second time in as many months, as House Democrats provided the needed votes for new House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson to avoid his first legislative catastrophe of his brief tenure. But funding the federal government won’t get any easier when the latest temporary patches expire in early 2024. It seems House Republicans have not yet accepted that they cannot accomplish the steep spending cuts they want as long as the Senate and the White House are controlled by Democrats. (11/16)

Reuters:
‘Staggering’ Rise In Measles Cases Last Year, Says WHO And CDC 

There was a “staggering” annual rise in measles cases and deaths in 2022, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Cases jumped by 18% to an estimated 9 million, and deaths to 136,000, mostly among children, the health agencies said in a joint statement on Thursday. There were large or disruptive outbreaks in 37 countries last year, the majority in Africa, compared to 22 in 2021. (Rigby, 11/16)

Stat:
Measles Cases And Deaths Increase Worldwide, Report Finds

The problem is mounting, with year-to-date numbers for 2023 on track to potentially double the 2022 figures, Natasha Crowcroft, the WHO’s global lead for measles and rubella, told STAT in an interview. “If this carries on the direction it’s going in, this is going to be a disaster for children in the most vulnerable settings,” Crowcroft said. (Branswell, 11/16)

Reuters:
CDC Expedites Release Of 77,000 Additional Doses Of Sanofi-AstraZeneca’s RSV Drug 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday it has expedited the release of more than 77,000 additional doses of Sanofi and AstraZeneca’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) drug Beyfortus. The additional doses, which the CDC said will be distributed immediately to physicians and hospitals, will help improve the availability of the drug at a time when a surge in cases of the disease is outpacing supply. (11/16)

AP:
RSV Is Straining Some Hospitals, And US Officials Are Releasing More Shots For Newborns

RSV infections are rising sharply in some parts of the country, nearly filling hospital emergency departments in Georgia, Texas and some other states. At Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. Laura Romano said kids and parents are spending 10 or more hours in the emergency department’s waiting room. Kids are presenting sicker than they have in previous years, with more in need of oxygen, Romano said. … In Georgia, the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hospital system is in “surge” mode because of RSV, with a high volume of patients straining staff, said Dr. Jim Fortenberry, the system’s chief medical officer.(Stobbe and Hunter, 11/16)

Reuters:
Senior US FDA Official Woodcock To Retire Next Year 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, who led the regulator during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as acting chief, plans to retire early next year, the agency said on Thursday. Woodcock, 75, is an FDA veteran who twice led its pharmaceutical division for at least a decade in each instance. There she reshaped the drug approval process, relaxing the criteria needed for certain drugs to reach the market. (Aboulenein, 11/16)

The New York Times:
Biden Signs Spending Bill, Staving Off A Government Shutdown

President Biden signed a short-term government funding bill on Thursday, narrowly averting a government shutdown but leaving a larger spending clash for Congress early next year. The Senate gave final approval to the package late Wednesday, about 48 hours before a shutdown deadline at midnight Friday. In a two-step plan, the bill funds congressional priorities including military construction, veterans affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department through Jan. 19. Other agencies would be funded until Feb. 2. (Friedman, 11/17)

Axios:
Christmas Minus The Tree: Health Policy Gridlocked As Congress Bolts

By punting their spending disputes past the holidays, House Republicans have put the kibosh on what’s become an annual rite for health care interests: the year-end legislative grab bag sometimes known as the Christmas tree. It’s the first December since 2012 without a critical funding deadline, Raymond James analyst Chris Meekins notes. (Bettelheim, 11/17)

Modern Healthcare:
Community Health Center Funding Delay Sparks Anxiety 

Few people enjoy witnessing a dysfunctional Congress run up against one deadline after another just to avoid shutting down the government, but if you lead a community health center, you have little choice but to watch and hope. Congress narrowly avoided a shutdown in September but at that time only extended funding until this Friday. At the same time, lawmakers failed to reauthorize multi-year funding for federally qualified health centers, granting them the same brief reprieve. (McAuliff, 11/16)

NBC News:
Child And Teen Cancer Deaths Fell 24% In The Last 2 Decades, CDC Says

The rate of child and teen cancer deaths in the U.S. fell 24% from 2001 to 2021, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report looked at death rates for Black, Hispanic and non-Hispanic white youths up to 19 years old. Those three groups comprised 92% of all youth cancer deaths in 2021, the report noted. Death rates among children of all ages in those groups dropped between 2001 and 2011. But after 2011, only children 9 and younger saw “significant” declines. (Mogg, 11/16)

Reuters:
US FDA Approves AstraZeneca’s Breast Cancer Drug Combination 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved AstraZeneca’s Truqap in combination with an older drug, providing another treatment option for patients with the most common type of breast cancer. The FDA decision allows use of the drug, chemically known as capivasertib, in combination with the British drugmaker’s older cancer treatment faslodex. (11/16)

Reuters:
FDA Panel Urges Acrotech To Speed Up Study On Cancer Drugs 

A panel of independent experts to the U.S. health regulator urged Acrotech Biopharma to work with the agency to bring forward the date for releasing trial data that could confirm benefits of the company’s blood cancer drugs. The drugs, Folotyn and Beleodaq, have already been on the market for nearly a decade or more. They were approved under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated pathway in 2009 and 2014, respectively, for treating a rare form of blood cancer. (11/16)

Stat:
Colon Cancer Screening Kits Have High Rate Of Untestable Samples

More than a tenth of fecal immunochemical tests, used for routine colorectal cancer screening, contained samples that could not be processed by labs, according to a study published this week in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. This is over twice the amount recommended by the U.S. Multi-Society Task Force, whose guidance says that for such tests the proportion of returned and unprocessed samples should not be more than 5%. (Balthazar, 11/16)

USA Today:
On Preterm Labor, U.S. Gets Failing Grade (Again) In New Report

The U.S. has landed another poor grade when it comes to preterm births, with festering disparities in outcomes for Black and Native women that are life-threatening, according to a new annual report. Preterm birth, when babies are born before 37 weeks gestation, is among the leading causes of infant death in the U.S., according to the March of Dimes. Outcomes across the country improved only slightly this year. …The March of Dimes gave the U.S. a D+ grade in its “State of Maternal and Infant Health for American Families” report card published Thursday. (Cuevas, 11/16)

AP:
Lawyers For Religious Leaders Challenging Missouri Abortion Ban Say Law Imposes Beliefs On Everyone

Missouri lawmakers intended to “impose their religious beliefs on everyone” in the state when they passed a restrictive abortion ban, lawyers for a group of religious leaders who support abortion rights said at a court hearing Thursday. But attorneys for the state countered that just because some supporters of the law oppose abortion on religious grounds doesn’t mean that the law forces their beliefs on anyone else. (Salter, 11/16)

CNN:
GOP Senators’ Late Night Effort To Approve Military Nominations Fails To Overcome Tuberville And Lee Hold

Republican Senators Tommy Tuberville and Mike Lee maintained the Alabama Republican’s hold on military nominations despite a group of Republican senators who attempted to push through nominations when they returned to the Senate floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Sens. Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Lindsay Graham and Todd Young began their effort to confirm nominees around 12:15a.m. ET and wrapped around 3:45a.m. ET. (Rimmer, 11/16)

Fox News:
COVID And Flu Vaccine Rates Are Declining For US Health Care Workers, CDC Reports: ‘Disturbing Trend’

Fewer U.S. health care workers are keeping up to date on their COVID-19 and flu vaccinations, according to two separate reports this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For the first study, researchers pulled data from the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) for January to June 2023. They found that flu vaccine coverage was 81% among health care employees at hospitals and 47.1% at nursing homes. (Rudy, 11/16)

CBS News:
COVID-19 Testing Firm Leaves SF After Investigators Said Sites Fueled Drug Activity

A COVID-19 testing company has ceased operations in San Francisco after officials said an investigation revealed cash payments given to those being tested had facilitated drug activity. … “At this time, almost four years into the pandemic, the public can rest assured that the vast majority of testing operators in San Francisco are legitimate and provide a much-needed public health service. However, the City has put a health order in place make sure we have the legal tools necessary to weed out any bad actors,” Chiu said. (Fang, 11/16)

CIDRAP:
Nearly Half Of US Veterans Had Long-COVID Symptoms Up To 6 Months Later 

Nearly half of 363,000 US veterans who tested positive for COVID-19 still had symptoms up to 6 months later, and the risk factors for this condition were Black race, older age, diabetes, and severe infection, concludes a study published yesterday in the Annals of Epidemiology. (Van Beusekom, 11/16)

Reuters:
Walgreens To Close Nearly All Pharmacies On Thanksgiving For First Time 

Walgreens Boots Alliance will close nearly all of its stores and pharmacies on Thanksgiving Day for the first time in the chain’s history, amid pushback from pharmacists and technicians over poor work conditions and under-staffing. Peer CVS Health (CVS.N) also said it plans to shut all of its non-24-hour pharmacy locations early next Thursday, while Rite Aid said its pharmacies will be closed but retail stores will remain open. (11/16)

AP:
Barefoot Workers And Cracked Floors Were Found At A Factory That Made Recalled Eyedrops, FDA Says

An Indian company that recently recalled eyedrops sold in the U.S. had a host of sanitation and manufacturing problems, including barefoot workers, cracked floors and altered records, U.S. health inspectors found. Food and Drug Administration officials uncovered more than a dozen problems at the Mumbai plant operated by Kilitch Healthcare India, according to a preliminary inspection report posted by the agency. The factory produced more than two dozen varieties of eyedrops that were subject to an FDA safety warning last month. (Perrone, 11/16)

Stat:
Docs Divide Over Reforms To Panel That Determines Medicare Pay

Doctors are splitting, specialty by specialty, over whether and how to overhaul a secretive panel that helps determine how much Medicare pays them for their work. (Trang, 11/17)

Modern Healthcare:
CMS Pay-For-Performance Sepsis Measurement Worries Providers

Worries about care quality and antibiotic resistance are growing as a financial component is added to hospital compliance with federal requirements designed to reduce sepsis cases. … Starting in January, hospitals will have to improve their compliance with the metrics to receive full points and avoid a penalty under the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program. (Devereaux, 11/16)

Modern Healthcare:
CommonSpirit To Expand Ambulatory Services Amid Financial Losses

After a year of cost-cutting, CommonSpirit Health is looking to add ambulatory care capacity next year. The health system plans to add more facilities for ambulatory patients in the coming year, as care continues to move outside of the hospital, it said in financial documents released Wednesday. The nonprofit system recently added 19 imaging centers, seven ambulatory surgery centers and six primary and urgent care sites across multiple states, including California and Texas. (Hudson, 11/16)

The Wall Street Journal:
Your Ambulance Is On The Way. ETA: 65 Minutes.  

Call 911 in this northwest Nebraska town, and the ambulance responding will likely be coming from South Dakota. If that crew isn’t available, the ambulance might drive from Valentine, Neb., 60 miles and a different time zone away. Or from Gordon, where the all-volunteer staff includes employees of a grocery store, bank, veterinary office and farmer’s co-op. “You’re looking at an hour or longer for a response,” said Rose Chappell, the last emergency medical technician in Merriman, which had to shut down its ambulance service. (Najmabadi, 11/16)

The Washington Post:
UCLA Sues Toymaker Mattel For Allegedly Reneging On $49M Donation 

As the toymaker behind the Barbie DreamHouse, Mattel knows a thing or two about grand designs. In 2017, the company pledged to bring one such vision to life with a $49 million gift to the University of California at Los Angeles’s health system to expand bed capacity through a new hospital tower. As part of the donation, UCLA agreed to integrate Mattel’s logo into all of its signage and publications. But the toy company never fulfilled its pledge, offering only a fraction of the cash, UCLA alleged last week in a new breach-of-contract lawsuit. (Rosenzweig-Ziff and Bellware, 11/16)

The Colorado Sun:
Two Colorado Mental Health Centers Merge

Two of Colorado’s community mental health centers will merge in July, creating the largest behavioral health center in the state. WellPower, which provides mental health services and homeless outreach in Denver, is combining with Jefferson Center, the safety-net mental health organization for Jefferson, Clear Creek and Gilpin counties. (Brown, 11/16)

Axios:
New York’s Hospital Cybersecurity Rules Could Spur Similar Mandates

The idea of mandating that hospitals meet minimum cybersecurity standards is gaining traction amid scrutiny of mounting attacks that have knocked health systems offline for weeks and upended patient care. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week proposed the state become the first to require health systems to adopt certain cyber defenses, including preparation of response plans for a potential attack. (Reed, 11/17)

St. Louis Public Radio:
Missouri Will Keep Children On Medicaid Starting In 2024 

Missouri children who receive government health insurance will soon be able to keep their coverage for a year without worrying about being kicked off the state rolls. A provision in the federal spending bill approved last year ensures all people 18 and under who receive insurance through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will be covered continuously starting Jan. 1. Missouri is among the states that do not offer yearlong coverage. (Fentem, 11/17)

News Service of Florida:
Florida Bill Would Create ‘Remote-Site’ Pharmacies Where Techs Dispense Meds

A Florida Senate Republican has filed a proposal that would allow “remote-site” pharmacies, where pharmacy technicians could dispense medications while being supervised by pharmacists elsewhere. Sen. Jay Collins, R-Tampa, filed the bill (SB 444) Tuesday for consideration during the 2024 legislative session, which will start in January. (11/16)

CBS News:
Minnesota Hiring For New Advisory Council On African American Health Disparities

The Minnesota Department of Health is hiring for a new state advisory council focusing on African American health outcomes. The MDH on Thursday said it would welcome applications from community members to serve on the council, but added they would accept applications only through the end of Friday. They’re looking for anywhere from 12 to 20 people to represent or serve. They’re seeking health care providers, college students, patients or those who receive services, elders or older people, health and human services professionals, health equity researchers and others who may be qualified. (Henderson, 11/16)

CBS News:
University Of Minnesota Launches State’s First Research Center For Cannabis

 A new research center at the University of Minnesota will be looking into the impact of adult-use cannabis legalization on the state. On Thursday, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health announced the launch of the Cannabis Research Center. The bill that legalized cannabis for adults included a $2.5 million annual appropriation from cannabis sales tax to establish the CRC. (Premo, 11/16)

The New York Times:
Why Some Seniors Are Choosing Pot Over Pills

Seniors are one of the fastest-growing populations of cannabis users in the United States. While some older adults have used pot for decades, studies suggest that others are turning to the drug for the first time to help them sleep better, dampen pain or treat anxiety — especially when prescription drugs, which often come with unwanted side effects, don’t work as intended. In 2007, only about 0.4 percent of people age 65 and older in the United States had reported using cannabis in the past year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. That number rose to almost 3 percent by 2016. As of 2022, it was at more than 8 percent. (Caron, 11/16)

AP:
A Cannabis Worker Died On The Job From An Asthma Attack. It’s The First Reported Case In US 

The U.S. cannabis production industry’s first reported occupational asthma death took the life of a worker in Massachusetts, federal health and safety officials said. The woman, 27, was working in a cannabis cultivation and processing facility when she experienced worsening work-related respiratory symptoms that ended in a fatal asthma attack in January 2022, officials said in a federal report published Thursday. The report states that allergic diseases such as asthma are a growing concern in the U.S. cannabis industry, which has grown rapidly in recent years thanks to a wave of state-level legalizations. (Whittle, 11/16)

The Boston Globe:
Cannabis Worker’s Death Prompts Call For Steps To Prevent Work-Related Asthma

The state Department of Public Health on Thursday called on the cannabis industry to take steps to prevent work-related asthma, in the wake of the 2022 death of a 27-year-old worker from an asthma attack triggered by cannabis dust. The department also sent a bulletin to health care providers asking them to be alert for asthma among cannabis industry employees and reminding them of the requirement to report cases of work-related asthma and other respiratory diseases to the state. (Freyer, 11/16)

CBS News:
Attorney: Salem Hospital Patients Should Use Caution When Testing After Potential HIV And Hepatitis Exposure

Roughly 450 Salem Hospital patients were alerted that they may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV – a problem that lasted for two years before it was corrected. Endoscopy patients were getting intravenous medication “in a manner not consistent with our best practice,” a spokesperson for Salem Hospital said. “It’s very surprising to see this scope of falling below what would be considered the standard of care,” said Michael Walsh, a trial attorney for Altman Nussbaum Shunnarah. … If you do test positive, Walsh suggests calling an attorney. (Chan, 11/16)

The Missouri Independent:
Transgender Minors Sue University Of Missouri For Refusing Puberty Blockers, Hormones

Two transgender boys filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking to reverse the University of Missouri’s decision to stop providing gender-affirming care to minors. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, alleges halting transgender minors’ prescriptions unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of sex and disability status. (Hanshaw, 11/16)