The long-awaited decisions regarding the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates have finally arrived from the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “soft” mandate was shot down by SCOTUS by a 6-3 count. The mandate would have applied to all private businesses with 100 employees or more, requiring workers to…
Read MoreHackers breached the computer networks of Broward Health in October and may have accessed personal and financial information on more than 1.3 million patients and staff. The southeast Florida health system, which operates more than 30 healthcare locations in Broward County, disclosed it was hit with a cyberattack on Oct. 15, 2021, when an intruder gained…
Read MoreMedicare Part B spending on lab tests slightly increased to $8 billion in 2020, fueled by $1.5 billion in new reimbursements for COVID-19 diagnostics. But the report (PDF), released Dec. 30 from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG), found Medicare Part B lab spending on other types of tests declined in…
Read MoreThe U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation requiring workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing has been revived. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay on the OSHA vaccine mandate late Friday. The mandate had been paused since Nov. 6, challenged…
Read MoreHumana, Centene and several Blues plans have filed suit against multiple drugmakers, charging that the companies illegally conspired to protect market exclusivity for widely-prescribed HIV drugs. Pharmaceutical companies named in the suits include Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson’s Jansen, Bristol Myers Squibb and generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals. Gilead dominates the market for antiretroviral drugs, and…
Read MoreOn the last day of November, a nationwide injunction was issued by a federal judge in Louisiana to freeze the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). On Wednesday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the injunction should not have been applied nationwide. Instead,…
Read MoreWhile most states have seen an increase in the size of their home care workforce, the nursing home workforce has experienced a slight decrease, a new analysis shows. This growth and decline took place between 2009 and 2021. The analysis comes from a study published Monday in the policy journal Health Affairs. The study examines…
Read MoreIn 2013, the Obama administration included live-in caregivers in U.S. wage and overtime law. Previously, those caregivers – along with salaried workers – had been exempt from overtime provisions. The administration’s goal at the time was to raise caregiver wages. That has certainly happened, albeit in a small number of cases. Mostly, though, the Obama-era…
Read MoreIn Spring 2020, the federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) in Northeast Ohio came together to start talking about how they were each responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with an unprecedented crisis, they wanted to pool knowledge and resources so that they could serve their patients as well as possible. After having informal conversations for…
Read MoreNursing homes have lost 221,000 jobs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most among all healthcare providers, a new industry report finds. The report (PDF), released Wednesday by the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, shows that while other healthcare employment sectors have recovered some of their job losses, recovery…
Read More