- Unintentional catalyst spurred donor effort for UNLV med school building (reviewjournal.com)
Philanthropist Kris Engelstad McGarry, of The Engelstad Foundation
Kris Engelstad McGarry has made no secret of her difficult relationship with the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents...“It’s probably the only time you’ll hear me say this, but I have the regents to thank for it,” McGarry, trustee of the Engelstad Foundation...said. “Had they not been so difficult, we would never have found the necessity to go ahead and...do it on our own.”...The Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation was established in 2019...The approximately 135,000-square-foot building, on Shadow Lane in Las Vegas...is ahead of schedule and expected to open in June 2022...A notable result of the new process has been a faster process without bureaucracy...“It was wonderful to work with the corporation because they could make decisions, and make them quickly and move quickly,” Atkinson, the former dean, said. “They did all the same things that the state would have done, but the state would have taken much longer to actually get it all accomplished...“I don’t think anybody but a private corporation could have actually incorporated it all and got it done so quickly,” she added...READ MORE
- Healthcare industry will face higher medication errors, declining patient trust in 2022: Forrester (fiercehealthcare.com)
As the world enters the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry faces a variety of ongoing challenges and shifts in delivery of care, according to a new 2022 predictions report...They identified five key predictions for the coming year:
1. Health disparities will negatively impact rural Americans twice as much as urban Americans
2. Labor shortages will double the medication error rate among providers
3. Healthcare will no longer be considered a trusted industry as misinformation and cyberattacks continue
4. Sixty percent of virtual care visits will be related to mental health
5. The number of hospital-at-home providers will triple...READ MORE
- Amid a push to resolve opioid and talc claims, Johnson & Johnson settles Risperdal litigation for $800M (fiercepharma.com)
...Johnson & Johnson has made sweeping moves to resolve a mountain of litigation involving the safety and marketing of its opioid and talc products...J&J revealed it has settled liability claims surrounding its antipsychotic drug Risperdal...The agreement resolves approximately 9,000 cases the company faced from those who claimed Risperdal caused breast tissue development in males, a condition called gynecomastia...READ MORE
- NCPA’s 2021 Digest Report reveals state of community pharmacy (drugstorenews.com)
The NCPA Digest...found that the industry in 2020 represented 34% of all retail pharmacies in the United States and a $67.1 billion marketplace...
...total number of independent pharmacies, which is 19,397 as of June 2021. The store count...of 21,683 in 2019.
Ninety-five percent of independent community pharmacy...identified their primary pharmacy operation as retail pharmacy. Nearly 5% identified as compounding, long-term care, or specialty.
Between 2014-20, the generic dispense rate increased from 80% to 86%.
Seventy-four percent of community pharmacies serve population areas of 50,000 or fewer.
3,483 pharmacies are participating in the CPESN USA national network of clinically integrated pharmacies.
...2020, average prescription volume was 57,648 per store, a very slight increase from the 57,414 prescriptions dispensed in 2019.
Government programs continue to grow in importance, with 55% of total prescriptions covered by the Medicare Part D and Medicaid programs.
The top four point-of-care services provided are SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing (32%), blood glucose (24%), influenza (24%), and rapid strep (22%)...READ MORE
- Gov. Sisolak proclaims a week to honor Nevada health care workers (reviewjournal.com)
Governor Steve Sisolak
...Gov. Steve Sisolak delivered a bouquet of flowers to Las Vegas nurse practitioner Geoconda Hughes...In this manner, the governor launched a slate of events during what he called “Health Care Week in Nevada” aimed at recognizing Nevadans who work in medicine and raising community awareness of their efforts. The events also provide an opportunity, he said, to learn more about the problems facing health care workers and possible solutions to their workplace challenges...READ MORE
- Takeda launches value-based pricing program for lung cancer med Alunbrig, promises more deals to come (fiercepharma.com)
As the targeted treatment space for ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer becomes more crowded, Takeda is trying to get ahead of the competition with a drug pricing tool that’s rarely used among U.S. oncology players...Takeda recently launched a value-based pricing program for its ALK lung cancer med Alunbrig in collaboration with Point32Health, a combination of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care covering 2 million people in the New England area...Under the agreement, Takeda will offer a “significant” rebate to Point32Health if a patient doesn’t stay on Alunbrig past three months because of efficacy or tolerability reasons...The size of the refund would be tied to the number of members on the drug...Patients would also get a refund from their plans for out-of-pocket costs...READ MORE
- Alexa is finding a voice in healthcare. Cedars-Sinai, Boston Children’s sign on for new Amazon smart hospital service (fiercehealthcare.com)
Amazon is launching a new service for hospitals that will embed its voice technology deeper into clinical settings at scale...As part of Alexa Smart Properties, the service will simplify how hospitals and senior living facilities deploy and manage Alexa-enabled devices across their properties...Using Amazon Alexa devices in hospital rooms, patients can keep in touch with their families, connect with care team members, easily access news and information and play music, according to the company. Patients can ask Alexa for things they need—"Alexa, tell my nurse I need a pillow." The use of artificial intelligence to interpret patient intent enables the message to be sent to the appropriate care team member using existing hospital communication systems..."Voice is intuitive for patients, regardless of age or tech-savviness,"...READ MORE
- Death row inmate’s attorneys oppose lethal drug plan, want firing squad (thenevadaindependent.com)
Execution Chamber at Ely State Prison
With a crucial drug in the state’s supply of lethal injection materials set to expire at the end of February, Nevada officials are pressing forward in their attempt to execute death row inmate Zane Floyd, even as lawyers for Floyd are imploring the court to explore alternative methods, such as a firing squad...The experts, including multiple anesthesiologists who have experience with the drugs involved in the protocol, testified that the untried drug cocktail could result in suffering or an agonizing death...READ MORE
- Report rank10 most cost-efficient hospitals in the U.S., identifies $8B in potential Medicare savings (fiercehealthcare.com)
A new ranking of the 10 most cost-efficient hospitals in the U.S. reveals that if all hospitals matched their performance, $8 billion could be saved in Medicare dollars...The ranking, conducted by healthcare think tank Lown Institute , was based on Medicare data from 2016 through 2018 on more than 3,000 hospitals focusing on what they billed and how many patients died. For the analysis, it adjusted both mortality rates and cost based on patient risk...Here are the 10 most cost-efficient hospitals in the U.S., according to the Lown Institute:
Pinnacle Hospital (Crown Point, Indiana)
Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center (Reno, Nevada)
Mercy Medical Center Dubuque (Dubuque, Iowa)
Encino Hospital Medical Center (Encino, California)
Park Ridge Health (Hendersonville, North Carolina)
Oroville Hospital (Oroville, California)
Saint Michael’s Medical Center (Newark, New Jersey)
UnityPoint Health – Meriter (Madison, Wisconsin)
East Liverpool City Hospital (East Liverpool, Ohio)
Maple Grove Hospital (Maple Grove, Minnesota)
- Is mRNA the Future of Drug Development? (biospace.com)
Before the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine authorization, there were no mRNA therapies approved anywhere in the world. The idea of using messenger RNA as a way to get your body to be the drug manufacturer has been around for some time, but only in recent years has it become practical. And it was the COVID-19 pandemic that provided the opportunity for the technology to push ahead...In terms of cancer...BioNTech has two types of mRNA vaccines for cancer. “First, we have our off-the-shelf vaccines, where we’ve identified molecular features of tumors that are shared by many patients...By targeting these molecules, you can fight the cancer without getting collateral damage to healthy cells.”...“Second, we have highly personalized vaccines. We identify cancer mutations that are unique to every patient...We biopsy the tumor, sequence it, and design a unique, individualized vaccine for each patient.”...READ MORE