Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  Zynquista, the first oral treatment for people with Type 1 diabetes, is awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The advisory panel for the FDA, however, is split on whether to approve the new drug, which means that the agency would be responsible to decide by the end of March whether the drug should reach the market.  Read More

•  In a recent report, six major issues facing health care have been identified for 2019. This includes preparing for the arrival of digital therapeutics and connected devices, identifying employees that need to be upskilled or reskilled, bracing for tax reforms, creating a value line of products or services, keeping up with private equity's acquisitions and investments in the health sector, and navigating changes in the Affordable Care Act.  Read More

•  In the past year, 9 out of 10 people had visited a health care provider who are capable of prescribing medicines. Among those who went in for a possible infection, about 89 percent had a chat with their provider about whether antibiotics were appropriate. Some experts say this percentage should be higher and that more patients should understand why they were being prescribed an antibiotic. Antibiotics don't work on viruses and are little help for some conditions caused by bacteria, such as many forms of bronchitis and sinus and ear infections. Many times, an over-the-counter remedy can help with these symptoms.  Read More

•  A new effort to conquer rising costs in health care formally launched this week. The Society of Actuaries and Kaiser Family Foundation launched "Initiative 18 | 11" in an effort to address the rising cost of health care in the U.S., which is roughly 18 percent of its gross domestic product, while the rest of the developed world spends roughly 11 percent.   Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  Due the government shut down, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cut back on routine safety food inspections of seafood, fruits, vegetables, and many foods that are at high risk of contamination. There are concerns that outbreaks would not be prevented or caught at the earliest warning signs without inspections.  Read More

•  The F.D.A. released the new Digital Health Action Plan as part of the agency's effort to improve oversight of artificial intelligence and other digital health products. Its aim is to be more efficient, while promoting safety of technology.  Read More

•  According to a recent study, the U.S. spends more on health care than other developed countries and nearly 25% more than that of the next-highest country, Switzerland. What's to blame? Researchers say prices are to blame for the high health care spending but it's been the same old story since 2003.  Read More

•  Pregnant and haven't gotten your flu shot yet? A recent study found that pregnant women who are hospitalized in the ICU with the flu are four times more likely to deliver babies who are premature or born with low birth weight. Just another reason to get your flu shot if you're pregnant!  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  A new AI imaging tool promises to cut the time between medical imaging, diagnosis, and the start of treatment. This new tool would offer physicians automated diagnostic alerts for certain conditions within seconds of the image being completed, potentially accelerating patient diagnosis.  Read More

•  Could exercising in extremely cold weather make us healthier? While there is little evidence to support the health benefits of training in cold weather, believers say that cold weather exercising can help burn extra calories, exercise your blood vessels, and train the immune system. Which way to the next icy lake?  Read More

•  As the partial government shutdown continues on, some important health-related initiatives are put on hold. Many public health operations are vulnerable to the continued shutdown due to funding streams that are being affected. Health services for Native Americans are also on hold because Indian Health Service clinics are funded through the Department of the Interior.  Read More

•  It's a new year! Have you had a chance to get into the groove of 2019's health care news yet? Let's see how much you've learned going into the new year with this week's health care quiz.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  Many foods are banned in the European Union that are still used in the U.S., such as additives that are linked to cancer and can be found in American-made bread, cookies, soft drinks, and other processed foods. Drugs that are used in farm animals as well as genetically modified foods are also banned in Europe.  Read More

•  Where do hospitals need to be five years from now and how should they be preparing for the future? Patient experience is at the center of the future of hospitals and with that, hospitals should be looking for new methods to measure and report on patient satisfaction as well as to engage the patients. Some strategies also include providing staff escorts to guide patients to their destinations, experimenting with virtual experiences, and working with ride share companies to provide patient transportation.  Read More

•  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has furloughed more than 40 percent of employees starting this past Wednesday in response to the partial government shutdown. The FDA will continue work that is critical to public health and safety and will still be able to respond to emergencies.  Read More

•  In 2018, several new Medicaid policies rocked the nation. To name a couple: requiring proof that beneficiaries work a certain number of hours per week or month with some exempt individuals and a proposal that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to consider whether someone is likely to use public services when deciding if the individual should be granted permanent residency.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  The National Institutes of Health began a study in 2013, which is still ongoing, that aims to reveal how brain development is affected by various experiences, which include concussions, substance abuse, and screen time. CBS's "60 Minutes" reported on the early results of the study and found that heavy screen use was associated with lower scores on some aptitude tests. But the data is still preliminary and it's unclear whether the effects are long lasting.  Read More

•  St. Mary Medical Center's emergency department was facing a slew of problems, from overcrowding to gaps in leadership to changes in their electronic health record system. By hiring consultants and making updates to the design of their EHR documentation templates as well as to leadership and front-end processes, they were able reduce length of stay, left-without-being-seen rate, and the arrive-to-provider time.  Read More

•  According to a new analysis from the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS), Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) saved Medicare $2.7 billion to date, proving that ACOs are valuable and are saving American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.  Read More

•  Families who don't qualify for subsidies under ACA (Affordable Care Act) are bearing the full cost of coverage as insurance premiums continue to rise. These financial challenges have pushed many to drop their coverage or turn to cheaper, less comprehensive insurance.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  Health care spending has slowed down for the second year in a row. The lower rate can be attributed to a slower growth in hospital services, clinics, and physician offices, which make up 63% of health care spending, according to the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.  Read More

•  The USDA is easing up on the nutrition rules for school lunches. While the lunches are healthier than they were 5 years ago, schools need to have a little more flexibility in serving meals that kids would actually eat in order to avoid wasting food. The new rule gives administrators more leeway in serving non whole grain-rich breads and pastas, which is currently a requirement unless a waiver is in place.  Read More

•  Two rideshare giants are competing head to head to move into the health care space. Both Uber and Lyft have hired health care executives in an effort to become leaders in health care transportation services, providing reliable and comfortable transportation for patients.  Read More

•  The placenta has long been deemed an afterthought but more and more, scientists are viewing this ephemeral organ as critical to understanding the health and course of pregnancy. The placenta is the missing link between complications during pregnancy and development of the fetal brain.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  In the wake of a growing trend where parents opt to not vaccinate their children, reported cases of measles worldwide have been on the rise. Measles, a highly contagious scourge, had been nearly eradicated in many parts of the world just a few year ago. However, due to under- or unimmunized children in recent years, measles outbreaks are increasing in places like the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean region, and Europe. At least 95 percent of a population must have immunity to control the spread of measles, according to public health officials.  Read More

•  Lyft, a ride sharing application, has announced the hiring of its first ever VP of Health Care.  Lyft has been focusing its efforts on reducing the health care transportation gap for patients and addressing some of the social determinants that cause care disparities.  Read More

•  The number of children in the U.S. who don't have health insurance is increasing, according to a report released on Thursday by Georgetown University. Advocates for children's health blame the current administration's policies on enrollment health plans for this rise. The uninsured rate for children rose by 276,000 in 2017.  Read More

•  In response to the ever-growing sentiment that physicians are becoming bogged down by EHRs, the federal government drafted a new strategy that details goals to reduce clinician burden surrounding their interaction with EHRs and improve EHR ease of use, while still meeting regulatory requirements.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  For over a decade, hospitals across the U.S. have been merging at a rapid pace. Hospitals argue that consolidation benefits patients because of cheaper prices from coordinated services. However, in a recent analysis, mergers have been shown to actually cause an increase in prices on average hospital stays.  Read More

•  The Department of Health and Human Services is looking to remove regulatory barriers to sharing health information and recently passed the HIPAA request for information (RFI) on to the Office of Management and Budget. This is a big step in HIPAA reform as electronic data-sharing is becoming more the norm in health care.  Read More

•  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has received at least 252 cases of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. This polio-like disease has affected a number of children between the ages of 2 and 8. The illness starts with a fever and, in some cases, progresses to paralysis.  Read More

•  In March, Uber launched a HIPAA-compliant health platform that allows providers to schedule rides for patients.  Now, Uber is seeking supporters within the industry to help expand its reach and help address access gaps for patients with limited transportation means and no cell phone.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) proposed a new rule on Thursday that gives states more control over setting rates for capitated payments as well as providing a three-year transition period to shift from fee-for-service to managed care. The proposed reform would allow states to include access to telehealth providers and define what qualifies as a "specialist" in determining network adequacy standards.  Read More

•  Respondents to new research are skeptical about the role electronic health records (EHRs) will play in precision medicine, saying in a recent report that precision medicine may be too complex for EHRs. Hospitals all over the world are embarking on precision medicine work, even if EHR vendors are not poised to dominate the realm.  Read More

•  In recent experiments, mice genetically modified to develop symptoms like those of Alzheimer's were given a synthetic form of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, a substance found in marijuana, over a six week period. These mice performed as well as healthy mice on a memory test. Mice given placebos instead of THC exhibited signs of memory loss.  Read More

•  How much do you remember from this week's health care news? Take the weekly health quiz to find out!  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.

Here's The Latest in Health Care:

•  Amazon Web Services (AWS) is working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to leverage cloud technology in order to make big biomedical datasets more easily accessible in health care and and for researchers. AWS is joined by Google Cloud and others for NIH's STRIDES Initiative, or Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability.  Read More

•  On Thursday, the government announced a new payment model that would more closely align Medicare Part B drug costs with prices of the same drug in other countries. This new payment model, called the International Pricing Index (IPI), is projected to save Medicare over $17 billion over a five-year pilot.  Read More

•  You've heard of microplastics showing up on beaches all over the world. And now, researchers have even found microplastics in samples of human waste from individuals spanning across 8 different countries. There's a concern that microplastics might be entering the blood stream, lymphatic system, and even the liver.   Read More

•  The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new flu drug, Xofluza, which is expected to work against drug-resistant strains. The drug is not approved for young children and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still strongly recommends that every American over six months of age get the flu shot as soon as possible.  Read More

Each Friday, Signor Goat reports the latest from the week in health care. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of health care news. Brought to you by pMD, innovators in charge capture, secure messaging, clinical communication, MIPS registry, and care navigation software.