The Morning Read provides a 24-hour wrap up of everything else healthcare’s innovators need to know about the business of medicine (and beyond). The author of The Read published it but all full-time MedCity News journalists contribute to its content.
TOP STORIES
The Obamacare nightmare scenarios are in full swing at the National Governors Association meeting. From Politico:
The potential fallout from a decision for the plaintiffs has “been probably the most frequent topic of conversation” among the governors, said Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who is also chairman of the Republican Governors Association. His assessment was that every governor’s “first hope” is that Washington will solve the problem.
From The Associated Press:
In rounds of interviews at the National Governors Association’s winter meeting, several governors indicated they could do little about the estimated 8 million people who could drop coverage if they were to lose health insurance subsidies later this year — a scenario that legal experts suggest is a real possibility. While preliminary state-level discussions have begun in some cases, many governors charged that Congress should bear the burden of fixing any problems.
So if the Supreme Court overturns Obamacare, governors will either pass the buck or point the finger.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
LIFE SCIENCE
Valeant Pharma buys Salix for $14.5 billion.
Expect even more regulations around Laboratory-Developed Tests.
The Wall Street Journal gives cancer immunotherapy treatments some love.
Making the case for one-use syringes by telling the story of a village that didn’t have them.
If you hated the UCLA superbug you’ll really hate drug-resistant malaria.
PAYERS-PROVIDERS
Dr. John Willke, father of the anti-abortion movement, has died at 89.
Scrutiny continues over the Mayo-Google deal at Not Running a Hospital. “But this issue here really isn’t Google, is it? It is that Mayo Clinic is allowing its name and reputation to be used in a manner inconsistent with the high standard of medical knowledge and care for which it is rightly known.”
A new study delves deeper into what kind of cancer patients involve their families in decision-making.
Doctors are changing how they write medical records because of patient power and digital health. Really?
Not a good weekend for Carolinas HealthCare.
Since 2013, nonprofit Carolinas HealthCare System has filed more than 2,700 bill-collection lawsuits against patients, state records show.
An Observer review found that a number of those lawsuits were filed against low-income patients who lacked health insurance. That appears to defy the intent of new laws aimed at protecting vulnerable patients, advocates say.
Healthcare: the economic engine – even for physicians assistants. Don’t miss the accompanying interactive graphic, which includes this interesting fact: three of the top 10 biggest job growers come from the medical industry.
Take four minutes and listen to this beautiful story about nurses who treat the homeless.
TECH
Anthem and why encryption WAS the right thing to do.
Here’s a sneak peek at Robert Wachter’s “The Digital Doctor,” which will be a strong critique of everything from the bad deals and overhyping of early health tech.
The vendors’ case seems like a version of the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument: errors reflect poor implementation practices or screw-ups by users. This is certainly true at times, but . . . there are scores of errors that are all but inevitable given clunky software, including poor user interfaces. It seems right that the vendors would at least share responsibility if patients were harmed in such circumstances.
A LITTLE EXTRA
Our theory: this was created in a hospital subcommittee somewhere. (h/t @stecopywriting)
[Photo – a tour of the da Vinci Surgical System at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia – is from Flickr user Army Medicine]
