Allison Inserro

CMS announced a raft of proposed changes, including expanding its site-neutral payments between what Medicare pays for at physicians’ offices and off-campus hospital clinics, where rates are higher because of added hospital facility fees. The agency is also extending 340B drug discounts to off-site hospital clinics.

An FDA advisory committee voted 16-3 against recommending GlaxoSmithKline’s mepolizumab (Nucala) as an add-on treatment to inhaled corticosteroid-based maintenance treatments to reduce flare-ups in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A study of over 35,000 women with early-stage breast cancer found that where you live makes a difference in terms of what kind of posttreatment imaging is received, due to geographic variation.

If all states passed their own health insurance mandates similar to ones in New Jersey and Massachusetts, close to 4 million more Americans would have health insurance, and premium costs would drop an average of nearly 12%, according to a recent report from The Commonwealth Fund and the Urban Institute.

Coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (CWP), commonly called black lung, is making a return, especially in central Appalachia, according to a recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

A solution has been found to maintain a version of a free government website that has hosted clinical guidelines, but now users will have to pay for access.

Do e-cigarettes help current smokers quit, or do they just become an additional nicotine habit? A new study of more than 30,000 adults in Sweden indicates that traditional smokers use both methods.

A study of more than 97,000 elderly patients with hip fracture found they were not often prescribed osteoporosis medications in an effort to prevent future fractures, and in fact, the rates declined over 12 years—a finding that surprised researchers.

For the first time, HHS and the FDA said Thursday the idea of allowing the importation of prescription drugs from other countries will be considered, if the drug met certain conditions.

Patients with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who have short telomeres, a biomarker of aging, are more likely to have a worse quality of life and have a higher risk of exacerbations and death, according to a recent study, but daily azithromycin may help.

The shift to value-based care has stalled since 2017, according to a survey of health plan executive and providers commissioned by Quest Diagnostics. Quest said its third annual study suggests that physicians need better tools, like data access, and less complex quality measures to spur adoption of value-based healthcare, which focuses on care quality and patient outcomes rather than the quantity of services delivered.

The White House released a report saying the time is right to impose work requirements on 3 noncash welfare programs—food stamps, housing assistance, and Medicaid. Adding work requirements to these programs would reduce dependency upon them by nondisabled, working-age beneficiaries receiving such assistance, as poverty as fallen since the programs were created.

A study of the Mediterranean diet showed it had some beneficial effect on bone health for people with osteoporosis, but had no effect otherwise.

Providers, payers, and patients looking to do research on a clinical guideline need to get busy: They only have this weekend to download thousands of pages from federally funded websites that will close due to federal budget cuts in President Donald Trump’s budget.

There is widespread variation in how commercial insurers cover specialty drugs, a recent Heath Affairs study found, with only 16% of the drug-indication pairs examined covered the same way. Fewer than half were covered consistently by at least 75% of the plans.

CMS proposed new rulemaking Wednesday to update 2019 Medicare payment policies for fee-for-service patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD).

Breathing in additional oxygen improves the function of blood vessels in the brains of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to recent research.

A pair of articles paint a devastating picture of the effects of climate change on human health. One paper cited increased air pollution spurred by air conditioning and another paper said that the decreased nutritional quality of staple crops will increase diseases like anemia and diarrhea.

CMS cut the amount of money it is awarding to organizations that help individuals enroll in insurance for 2019 plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by $26 million, and, for the first time, is encouraging the so-called “navigators” to also sign people up for health insurance that provides a narrower level of coverage than the plans under the ACA.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) decided that current evidence is insufficient to recommend screening for peripheral artery disease and cardiovascular risk with the ankle-brachial index in asymptomatic adults.

A day before legislators will hold hearings on 15 bills relating to the 340B drug discount program for hospitals, 340B Health, which represents those hospitals and providers, released a report that said more than half of the disproportionate share hospitals would lose eligibility under one Congressional proposal.

An updated review of value-based insurance design (VBID) as a strategy for increasing consumer adherence to prescription medications found moderate-quality evidence that such strategies are useful for increasing the use of high-value drug classes while lowering cost sharing.

About an hour before HHS Secretary Alex Azar was due to give a keynote speech about drug prices at the 340B Coalition Summer Conference, his appearance was foreshadowed by a tweet from President Donald Trump who singled out 1 drug company. Azar was at the conference to talk not only about drug prices but also changes to the 340B program.

Can older women with low bone mass decrease their risk of falls with a fitness trend called explosive jumping? One study says it’s possible, and that it may be worthwhile to incorporate muscle power training into traditional fall-prevention programs.

Payers and providers are looking to keep vulnerable patients in pain from becoming addicted to painkillers, but those who live with pain on a daily basis are understandably upset at the thought of losing access to medications they say keep them functional. Here are 5 takeaways from recent coverage about this important issue.

President Donald Trump’s trade war with China could mean an end to cooperation with the United States to stop the flow of synthetic opioids like fentanyl; Medicaid beneficiaries in Arkansas had until Thursday night to log onto computers to report their work activities or exemption status for the month in order for them to maintain health insurance; a report claims that the Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency draft health assessment that warns most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other illnesses.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank released a report urging governments around the world to think seriously about planning for high quality care, noting that poor quality health services are holding back progress in countries of all income levels.

Combining certain antibiotics could make them stronger against harmful bacteria; Kentucky’s decision to abruptly cut Medicaid dental and vision benefits for about 500,000 adults has created confusion; Americans are having fewer babies.

Using a series of small public data sets, researchers found a positive association of prenatal exposure to folic acid fortification with subsequent cortical development in the brain—considered key for cognitive and mental health—through adolescence. The finding suggests that increased prenatal exposure to folic acid through food fortification may protect against psychosis through altered postnatal cortical development.

Researchers in China investigated the prevalence of bronchiectasis in different phenotypes of subjects with COPD and the correlation between bronchiectasis and different phenotypes, especially emphysema.