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A blood-based test to assess tumor mutational burden (TMB) was recently discovered as being able to accurately identify patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who could benefit from checkpoint inhibitor treatment. The study, conducted by researchers at UC Davis, Genentech, and Foundation Medicine, was published in Nature Medicine.

General Motors (GM) announced its partnership with the Henry Ford Health System to ensure wellness services and healthcare management for salaried employees; Democratic and Republican representatives in the House and the Senate have sent separate letters to HHS Secretary Alex Azar on eliminating direct and indirect remuneration fees; despite using infected kidneys in transplant patients, outcomes improved.

Instead of assessing a treatment’s impact solely on reductions in opioid use, the agency will take into account the effect of the treatment on things like emergency room admissions and infectious disease transmissions.

If patients want to be empowered to control their healthcare and if the United States wants healthcare to be economically efficient, then interoperability is critical, said Don Rucker, MD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (IT), during the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s 2nd Interoperability Forum. He was followed by CMS Administrator Seema Verma, who disparaged the current technological situation and painted a future where health data followed the patient and can be shared at the press of a button.

States that ranked poorly are those with high rates of diabetes and obesity; those with high rankings have long-term commitments to getting people insured.

One of the reasons why hospital readmissions for the elderly are remaining high may be posthospital syndrome; priority review vouchers, which can be awarded by the FDA to 1 company and sold for a hefty price to another, are commanding a lower price than in past years; almost 8 months after Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway announced their joint healthcare venture, there is little public information about it.

A recent study found that markers of platelet activity are increased in plasma of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and these are then normalized with antimycobacterial treatment. The researchers said their findings could have implications for new types of drug therapies.

In 2017, generics accounted for 90% of prescriptions in the United States, and while brand name drugs accounted for just 10% of prescriptions, they were responsible for 77% of prescription spending.

A new study found hospital participation in 5 common medical bundles under the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative was not associated with significant changes in Medicare payments, clinical complexity, length of stay, emergency department use, hospital readmission, or mortality.

Payment reforms efforts are still facing barriers, but buy-in and increased demand from self-insured employers can help spur widespread adoption of new payment models that will lead to health delivery system reforms, according to a commentary published in New England Journal of Medicine.

Notably, in contrast to previous reports on palliative care in children, in which most children died at home, most of the children who died during the study period died in the hospital or in the intensive care unit. In fact, some of the children died while receiving interventions, such as the placement of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube.

Celyad, a biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, recently announced that the FDA has accepted its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for CYAD-101, the first non–gene-edited allogeneic clinical program.

Complementary medicine and alternative medicine (CAM) is estimated to be a multibillion business in the United States, but people who use it instead of conventional cancer treatment have a 2-fold risk of death, a recent study in JAMA Oncology reported. Patients using or considering CAM are unlikely to discuss it with their doctors, who should proactively inform patients of the risk, the study said.

Bone mineral density (BMD) declines early in the course of type 1 diabetes in men but is little affected by the condition in women, according to a 10-year prospective study.

The California insurance commissioner, who has spoken out against other large healthcare mergers, this week asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to block the $69 billion deal combining Aetna with CVS Health.

A recent study analyzed the role of purinergic receptor P2X4 in microglia/macrophages during autoimmune inflammation, finding that P2X4 receptors modulate microglia/macrophage inflammatory responses and identify allosteric modulator ivermectin (IVM) as a potential candidate to promote the repair of myelin damage.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who work are costly to their employers in both direct and indirect costs and have greater productivity losses, according to a recent study.

If Medicare was allowed to negotiate drug prices, the Medicare Part D program could save $2.8 billion in 1 year on the 20 most commonly prescribed drugs alone, according to a new report from Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

During the 2018 International AIDS Conference, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Elton John AIDS Foundation revealed initial results from the LGBT Fund, which they launched in 2016. PEPFAR also announced over $360 million in funding over the next 12 months.

Cross-sector data sharing is particularly relevant to the burgeoning field of complex care. The creation of data-sharing partnerships requires flexible relationship-building approaches that establish trust among partnering organizations.

The use of inhaled vaporized cannabis neither improved nor worsened exercise performance and activity-related breathlessness for patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a recent trial published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

In addition to survival among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with hematological malignancies lagging behind that of children and older adults, AYAs also face unique challenges related to their physical, psychosocial, and economic circumstances.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents showing the FDA did little to intervene in the wider prescribing of fast-acting fentanyl drugs approved for patients with cancer who have high opioid tolerance; HHS said 96 organizations will get funding under Title X, the federal family planning program; drug companies may have reduced some prices in response to President Trump taking to Twitter to complain about costs, but the moves are largely symbolic and won’t have any real effect, analysts said.

Coverage of our peer-reviewed research and news reporting in the healthcare and mainstream press.

CMS announced a raft of final rulemaking Thursday for 2019, including ending the so-called 25% rule for long-term care hospitals, and approving add-on payments estimated to cost about $72 million for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy.

This week, the top managed care stories included a report that found quality issues and fraud in Medicare’s hospice program; the Trump administration expanded short-term health plans; cancer screening rates are falling short of targets.

Bristol-Myers Squibb recently announced that the European Commission has approved nivolumab (Opdivo) for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients with melanoma that have lymph node involvement or metastatic disease and who have undergone complete resection.

Following a peak of 17.4 million people enrolled in the individual insurance market in 2015, enrollment has continuously declined. With the elimination of the individual mandate and the expansion of short-term health plans, enrollment will likely continue to drop in 2019.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute recently announced that it is partnering with Royal Philips in order to establish and provide improved clinical pathways in cancer care.

A recent report about Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan calls attention to a substantial federal cost increase of $32.6 trillion in spending over 10 years. But, the report also reveals that total cost of healthcare spending would decrease over that 10-year period.