Hospital Ownership Data | Novavax Reveals Covid/Flu Vaccine Data | Telehealth Disparities

Plus: Gun-related injuries are the most common cause of accidental death in youth and children

The Biden administration released new data on hospital and nursing home ownership on Wednesday in a bid to increase transparency and promote competition, especially among organizations that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. Between 2016 and 2021, more than 3,000 skilled nursing facilities changed ownership and there were 347 ownership changes among hospitals.

The analysis doesn’t take any strong stands, but it suggests that policymakers and researchers could use the data to better assess how ownership affects quality of care. For example, one of the reasons for improving transparency is the surge in private equity investment in nursing homes, whereby firms have bought the real estate and leased-back the facility to the original owners with a markup, which some studies have shown reduced quality and increased morality. 

There was also wide variation based on geography. South Carolina saw ownership changes at 73 of its hospitals, or 19.2%, while the majority of states saw changes at 4% or less. Kentucky, New Jersey, and Connecticut also had rates above 10%. “Hospital and nursing facility consolidation leaves many underserved areas with inadequate or more expensive health care options,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement. 

Telemedicine has often been touted as an advance which will help reduce disparities in access to care, but a new study led by researchers at the University of Houston College of Medicine suggests that this has not been the case throughout the pandemic. Overall, almost a quarter of a million medical visits were analyzed from 67,733 patients, with the research finding that African Americans were 35% less likely to use telemedicine than white Americans. Hispanic people were 51% less likely than white people to have a telemedicine visit and Asian people and American Indian/Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders were also less likely to use telemedicine. The study concluded a few factors were responsible for these disparities, including lack of access to technologies which are required for telehealth appointments.

Deals Of The Week

Writing New Genes: Tessara Therapeutics, which was founded by Flagship Pioneering, has raised a series C round of over $300 million, bringing its total funding to over $500 million. The company’s developing what it calls a “gene writing” platform, aiming to change the genome without using Crispr or breaking DNA strands.   

Healthcare Staffing: Clipboard Health, a staffing marketplace that matches nurses and nursing assistants with open shifts at healthcare facilities, raised $80 million over two rounds bringing the company’s valuation to $1.3 billion. The Series C was led by Sequoia Capital and the Series B by IVP. Clipboard says it has tens of thousands of users and more than a thousand facilities across 30 U.S. cities. 

Mainstreaming Glucose Monitoring: Levels, a company that combines a continuous glucose monitor with software to monitor how diet affects health, has raised a $38 million Series A at a $300 million valuation. The company is betting that people who are not insulin dependent will be willing to wear the device to alter their diets and make better choices as a preventive measure – long before prediabetes or diabetes sets in. The round was a combination of individual founders and operator investors, crowdfunding and a16z. The product is currently available to a beta community of 25,000 paying members and the funding will go towards making it commercially available. 

Noteworthy

Health insurer Anthem’s first quarter profits reached $1.8 billion thanks to strong enrollment in its Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans. UnitedHealth Group last week reported $5 billion in profit in the first quarter led by its Optum health technology business and Medicare Advantage growth.

An Ohio doctor accused of giving deadly fentanyl prescriptions to 14 critically ill patients found not guilty. 

Kansas is the 26th state to allow nurse practitioners to practice independently. 

Nearly 6.2 million patients are waiting for non-urgent hospital procedures in England, according to new figures from the U.K.’s National Health Service. 

Coronavirus Updates

A new study reveals that patients who’ve been hospitalized with Covid-19 associated pneumonia are more likely to develop dementia than patients who’ve been hospitalized for other types of pneumonia. The study of over 20,000 patients revealed that dementia was about 18% more likely in these cases and as high as 28% for people over the age of 70. A small risk of developing dementia was even present in people under the age of 35 hospitalized with Covid pneumonia. The median time between the pneumonia and onset of dementia was about 182 days. This is just one of several avenues of research showing that Covid infections can have an impact on the brain, such as damage to the cells associated with the sense of smell or development of blood clots in the brain. 

It’s not just the brain, either. Moving into year three of the pandemic it’s clear that Covid can have multiple impacts on the body. For example, Covid infections are linked to the formation of retinal vascular occlusions, which can cause sudden vision loss. A Covid infection during pregnancy more than doubles the risk of severe pregnancy complications, including stillbirths. Covid infections appear to increase the risk of heart disease, even in mild cases, and even increase the risk of children developing diabetes. That’s not even getting into the issues related to long Covid. The good news is that for many of these Covid-related conditions, the risk goes down significantly with vaccination.  

In other coronavirus news:

Abbott Laboratories first quarter profits eclipsed $2.4 billion thanks to a surge in sales of Covid-19 diagnostic tests due to the Omicron variant. 

Exposure to air pollution might increase the likelihood of contracting Covid-19, according to a new study that adds to a growing body of research demonstrating the role air quality plays in the pandemic.  

The DOJ announced charges against 21 defendants accused of participating in pandemic fraud schemes ranging from making counterfeit vaccination cards to selling fake homeopathic Covid-19 cures, allegedly leaving the federal government with more than $149 million in losses.

About 87% of children hospitalized with Covid-19 when the omicron variant was dominant were unvaccinated, according to a study released Tuesday by the CDC. 

The Transportation Security Administration has dropped a mask mandate for its employees and will now no longer report how many of its employees are actively infected with Covid.

Across Forbes

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What Else We Are Reading

• Alzheimer’s Trials Exclude Black Patients at ‘Astonishing’ Rate (Bloomberg)

• Abortion Clinic on Texas-Mexico Border Faces Unique Legal and Cultural Challenges (Kaiser Health News)

• ‘A slow-moving glacier’: NIH’s sluggish and often opaque efforts to study long Covid draw patient, expert ire (Stat)