Welcome to Daylight Savings Time! Congress remains in session on Capitol Hill this week. Federal News Network reports that the President signed into law the $8.3 billion COVID 19 funding bill (H.R. 6074) on Friday.
Notwithstanding the cancellation of the HIMSS conference
- Modern Healthcare reports that the Trump Administration plans to release the final electronic health records interoperability and data blocking rules tomorrow, and.
- DaVinci, “a private sector initiative that addresses the needs of the Value Based Care Community by leveraging the HL7 FHIR platform,” with the FHIR API, plans to go ahead with virtual HIMSS presentations via an online format. Thanks DaVinci.
Fierce Healthcare reports on an interesting flu vaccine study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The researchers said continued vaccination of seniors, particularly with high-dose vaccines, still seems appropriate, as the study results did not preclude modest effectiveness of the flu vaccine against severe outcomes.
“Our findings raise questions, however, about the overall effectiveness of a vaccination strategy that is limited to standard vaccines and focuses too much on elderly persons. Supplementary strategies, such as vaccinating children and others who are most likely to spread influenza, may also be necessary to address the high burden of influenza-related complications among older adults,” the researchers concluded.
The researchers measured hospitalization and mortality rates by month of age. Their data included 170 million episodes of care and 7.6 million deaths. Flu vaccination rates increased sharply at age 65, but there was no matching decrease in hospitalizations or death.