News

Over a two-year period, health care organizations and their community partners in four cities — Atlanta, New Orleans, Detroit and Washington, D.C. — tested and scaled locally driven initiatives to improve Black maternal health equity.

In this Members in Action podcast, Northwell Health’s Viktor Klein, M.D., system director of quality and patient safety for OB/GYN, and Adriann Combs, clinical director of OB/GYN services, share how launching the Maternal Outcomes and Morbidity Collaborative (MOMS) has increased awareness of maternal health complexities, and reduced disparities in maternal care.

The National Institutes of Health will support a four-year study on the potential long-term effects of COVID-19 on women infected with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will host a webinar Nov. 10 at 3:30 p.m. ET on the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule private payor data collection and reporting policies.

The U.S. Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, which coordinates the nation’s medical countermeasures preparedness and response under the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, should establish an advisory committee of nonfederal partners to provide strategic guidance on topics such as supply chain and stockpiling considerations, private-sector partnerships for medical countermeasures development, and equitable allocation and distribution of limited resources, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study committee recommended.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., accepted the recommendation of her agency’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to administer Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine to children between the ages of five and 11.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released its calendar year 2022 final rule for the home health prospective payment system.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a final rule that increases Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system rates by a net 2.0% in calendar year 2022 compared to 2021. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released its calendar year 2022 final rule for the physician fee schedule.

AHA commented on recent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission discussions on possible approaches to reducing spending on Part B drugs and biologicals, improving alternative payment models, and revising the hospital wage index.

A United States Attorney‘s Office is attempting to bootstrap the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services billing guidelines on overlapping surgeries into a False Claims Act case, the AHA and Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania argue in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in a case involving University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.

During an AHA-sponsored Capitol Hill briefing, hospital leaders discussed how COVID-19 has accelerated longstanding health care workforce challenges, including worker shortages and mental health fatigue.   

The AHA and seven other national organizations representing hospitals and health systems urged congressional leaders to remove the reductions to the Medicaid disproportionate share hospital program and uncompensated care pools from the social spending bill known as the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376). 

In a study of over 89,000 adults hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms, prior vaccination with two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine was 77% effective in preventing COVID-19 in immunocompromised patients compared with 90% effective in immunocompetent patients, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine be administered for children ages five through 11.

The AHA is accepting applications for its 2022 Dick Davidson NOVA Award through Nov. 19. The award recognizes AHA member hospitals and health systems for their collaborative efforts to create healthier communities through health care, economic or social initiatives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention is recruiting health systems and health care providers to pilot test health equity indicators for cardiovascular health.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has extended the deadline for eligible hospitals to submit calendar year 2021 electronic clinical quality measures to the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program from Feb. 28 to March 31, 2022.

Open enrollment for 2022 coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplaces kicked off. The federally facilitated marketplace is open through Jan. 15, with over 5,500 local navigators and assisters and 48,000 agents and brokers available to help.

Health care providers should not purchase or use certain imported medical gloves from certain companies, which appear to have been reprocessed, cleaned or recycled and sold as new, the Food and Drug Administration announced.