1. 1948: Average daily price of a typical hospital room according to 15 Ohio hospital prices. That’s at least a dozen urgent care visits.
2. Catholic Systems Move Into Rx Field: Ascension, the world’s largest Catholic health system, is 1 of 4 systems involved in creating a non profit generic drug company. Intermountain Healthcare is spearheading the effort. Trinity System is also involved. The company will be directly manufacturing generics, or subcontract this work, with a goal of improving the supply of medications and getting control over pricing given recent spikes in generic drug costs. So how long now before a specialty pharmaceutical manufacturer partners or starts to build a healthcare provider company focused on their therapeutic concentration?
3. Aging Homes Pass Torch To ALF Campuses: The Jewish Home of San Francisco, founded in the 19th century and California’s largest private nonprofit senior residence and skilled-nursing facility, has started to undergo a facelift this month. Seniors here used to stay for 5 or 10 years, according to CEO Daniel Ruth, but now their length of stay is a matter of months at most, as more of the population gets home or community-based services. The facility will add 115 assisted living apartments and 75 memory care and support suites, expanding on the existing 350 SNF and short-stay suites. The changes, Ruth said, were necessary given over-reliance on Medicaid funding – a 30% reduction a few years ago prompted a new strategy and more privately insured patients. The new campus will be in one of the oldest counties in the country (San Francisco and San Mateo), according to a report by the Jewish News. Ruth believes there is a major resource issue facing the rising number of aging and frail elderly.
4. Veterans Mental Health Top of Mind: Cigna introduced a Mindfulness for Vets program to combat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other health conditions. The goal: access substance use treatment, housing, health insurance and more.
5. App For Cancer: 80% of children diagnosed with childhood cancer in the US survive but those that survive often live with co-morbidities that are often a consequence of treatment, ongoing care or remission. GRYT Health and Bristol-Myers Squibb announced a new app, the ‘Stupid Cancer App,’ designed to anonymously connect people affected by cancer, give them a platform for exchange and empower them with important resources and information.
6. Teen Pregnancy & Abortion Trends: A girl in our urban Hartford middle school – a good athlete, singer, and smart-as-whip straight-A student – was offered a full-ride to a private high school in the area, but plans have changed for her due to an unplanned pregnancy. She doesn’t have a mom or dad and is raised by her aunt and a school community. She’s taking a few days to evaluate options. The news was surprising to many of us and it again reminded me anyway of the national debate around abortion. There’s a new report from the National Academies of Sciences on abortion safety and prevalence. It found that an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of secondary infertility, pregnancy-related hypertensive disorders, pre-term birth, breast cancer or mental health disorders. The vast majority of abortions can be provided safely in office-based settings, the researchers found. On the controversial side, 39% of women of reproductive age resided in a county without an abortion provider and approximately 17% travel more than 50 miles to obtain an abortion. Between 1980-2014, the abortion rate in the U.S. decreased by more than half, from an estimated 29 to 15 per 1,000 women of reproductive age. Increasing use of contraceptives and the decline in the rate of unintended pregnancy are drivers. Health insurers provide coverage in select circumstances related to trauma, violence, injury or abuse.
7. When Travel Ban Policy Impacts Survival: A man with a rare blood cancer needs a bone marrow stem cell transplant to live and his brother, who lives in Iran, is a match. The travel ban complicates this. Click here for the story
8. Extra Point: 79-year-old Ruth was wandering the halls at the Woodland Street medical building near the campus of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford on Monday. I was about to enter the Clinical Lab office for blood work – when I noticed Ruth seemed disoriented. She was trying to find her eye doctor, and thought he was on the third floor. I offered to help and so we walked down to the lobby to look up her doctor’s name. Ruth has a frail figure, walks slow and has some trouble seeing so I give her credit - she made it to her appointment and was only 1 floor away. If I am so lucky at her age. She said she had been in the halls for about 30 minutes. No one was with her so I walked into the office to ‘check her in’ and the office manager greeted with a smile, ‘Hi Ruth – what are you doing here again?’ Turns out Ruth had already been for her appointment the day before. I walked her back to the downstairs elevator and the bench where the senior van stops…she says she lives alone in an apartment in the city. On this Holy weekend for many of us, say a prayer for all the Ruth’s out there.