Tuesday’s Tidbits

David Ermer–CDC, COVID-19, COVID-19 testing, COVID-19 vaccine, Employee Wellness Programs, Federal employment benefits, Mental health care, U.S. Healthcare–
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Bloomberg reports that “President Joe Biden said [today] he wants all American adults eligible for a coronavirus vaccine by April 19, two weeks earlier than his previous goal. All but two states are already set to meet that goal, with Oregon and Hawaii having planned to open up vaccines to all non-minors on May 1.”

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) released a report finding that “The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory droplets carrying infectious virus. It is possible for people to be infected through contact with contaminated surfaces or objects (fomites), but the risk is generally considered to be low.” As this BBC News article illustrates, last Spring we were quite worried about contracting COVID-19 from contaminated surfaces. In any event, thank heavens that we have the vaccines.

Federal News Network reports that front line federal employee access to the COVID-19 vaccine depends upon their employing agency.

If you are a federal employee working in the field, like Food and Drug Administration inspectors, Forest Service rangers or Custom and Border Protection officers, getting a COVID-19 vaccine from your agency isn’t a sure thing.

The Department of Homeland Security is making an all-out effort to vaccinate all 300,000 employees.

Other agencies like the Agriculture Department or the IRS are asking employees to take a path through their state and local governments.

This inconsistent application of agency support for “frontline” workers to receive one of the three inoculations has the potential to create a have and have nots among agencies.

Hopefully as the COVID-19 vaccine supply continues to expand and access restrictions are removed, these unfortunate quirks in the process will be ironed out quickly.

In other healthcare related tidbits

  • On April 12, the CDC will be sponsoring its decennial meeting on healthcare associated infections.
  • The Food and Drug Administration released a COVID-19 update today. The FEHBlog wonders when the FDA will take up granting full marketing approval for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and when AstraZeneca will file an emergency use authorization with the FDA for its COVID-19 vaccine. Those steps take us closer to ironing out the process quirks.
  • MedPage Today reports that

A personalized, hands-on care strategy for patients struggling with addiction was effective at reducing hospital readmission, a randomized trial found. In a comparison of hospitalized adults with substance use disorder involving opioids, cocaine, or alcohol, those who received Navigation Services to Avoid Rehospitalization (NavSTAR) care saw far better outcomes than those who simply received treatment as usual, according to Jan Gryczynski, PhD, of the Friends Research Institute in Baltimore, and colleagues.

  • Health Payer Intelligence informs us that

A digital therapeutic weight loss program led to major medical cost savings, according to a Rally Health Inc. study that points to wellness programs as cost-effective strategies to tackle the obesity epidemic. The study published in Obesity examined program data over a three-year period to analyze medical cost trends for those participating in Rally Health’s Real Appeal weight loss intervention program.

Researchers compared medical costs for a group of participants in the digital therapeutic wellness program with costs for a control group of non-participants. The control group was selected to match the intervention group in terms of health risk, baseline medical costs, age, gender, geographic region, and chronic conditions.

The study found that the wellness programming resulted in significant weight loss. There was an average weight loss of 3 percent for 4,790 program participants who attended at least one session over a 52-week period. In addition to providing positive member outcomes, the wellness program lowered medical expenditures significantly. Costs for the intervention cohort were 12 percent less than costs for the control group. What’s more, the savings of the wellness program cohort were 2.3 times more than program costs, marking significant return on investment.

  • Adam Fein reports in his Drug Channels blog that

The drug channel is consolidating, both vertically and horizontally. For evidence, look no further than Drug Channels Institute’s estimates of pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) market share, which are shown in the chart below. For 2020, DCI estimates that the three biggest PBMs [CVS Health (including Caremark and Aetna), the Express Scripts business of Cigna, and the OptumRx business of UnitedHealth Group] accounted for more than three-quarters of total equivalent prescription claims. * * * This concentration helps plan sponsors and payers, which can maximize their negotiating leverage by combining their prescription volumes within a small number of PBMs.