News

AHA today participated in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fall Immunization Kick-off Event for partner organizations, which focused on vaccinating Americans against COVID-19, flu and RSV to prevent against severe outcomes such as hospitalization and death.

This October through December under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare will reduce the beneficiary coinsurance amount for 34 Part B prescription drugs between $1 and $618 per average dose, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced recently.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on legislative proposals to prevent and respond to generic drug shortages.

The Senate, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) released an updated version of the Bipartisan Primary Care and Health Workforce Act, which the committee plans to markup Sept. 21.

AHA today voiced support for a provision in the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (H.R. 5378) that would suspend for two years the Medicaid disproportionate share hospital reductions scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 1, but urged House leaders to reject another provision that would permanently implement reductions to Medicare payments for drug administration services in off-campus hospital outpatient departments. 

Christine Albert, chief experience officer for LCMC Health in New Orleans, will serve as president of the advisory board for AHA’s Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development professional membership group in 2024. David Grandy, vice president of innovation for Kaiser Permanente’s Garfield Innovation Group in Oakland, Calif., will serve as president-elect.

In this podcast during National Suicide Prevention Month, a behavioral health leader from Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health and participant in AHA’s Suicide Prevention Learning Collaborative, shares ideas and best practices to support health care worker well-being across the organization.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Office for Civil Rights have updated their tool to help health care providers (especially smaller organizations) identify and assess potential risks to electronic protected health information, as required by the HIPAA Security Rule.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) yesterday alerted the sector to a ransomware group that has claimed over 60 victims since March, demanding payments ranging from $200,000 to $4 million.

The AHA today urged the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice not to finalize the draft guidelines describing how the agencies review mergers and acquisitions to determine compliance with federal antitrust laws.

At its annual conference Sept. 11 in Chicago, the AHA’s Society for Health Care Strategy & Market Development professional membership group presented its 2023 Leadership Excellence Award to Christine Gallery, senior vice president of planning and chief strategy officer at Emerson Health in Massachusetts.

AHA is providing its latest social media toolkit to help hospitals encourage vaccination against COVID-19.

The U.S. infant mortality rate was essentially unchanged in 2021, but the number of deaths rose 2% to 19,928, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sept. 12

The Food and Drug Administration’s independent Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee Sept. 12 by unanimous vote declared oral phenylephrine ineffective as a decongestant.

As authorized Sept. 11 by the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today recommended a single dose of the updated Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines for Americans aged 12 and older, and one or two doses of the updated vaccines for previously vaccinated children aged six months through 4, at least two months after receipt of their last dose.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sept. 12 introduced the Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act, AHA-supported legislation that would make it a federal crime to assault health care workers in hospitals, with enhanced penalties for assaults that result in serious bodily injury.

Under the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent agreement with Regeneron to develop a new monoclonal antibody to prevent COVID-19, the U.S. list price for a new commercialized product could not exceed the retail price in comparable markets globally, HHS said.

Commenting on the physician fee schedule proposed rule for calendar year 2024, AHA urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to work with Congress to eliminate the budget neutrality cut to the payment update, expressing deep concern about the rule’s almost 3.3% proposed cut to reimbursement. 

September is National Preparedness Month. And today marks the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

In comments submitted today, AHA expressed strong concern about the proposed hospital outpatient market basket update, noting it “does not capture either the unprecedented inflationary environment or the other persistent financial headwinds hospitals and health systems are experiencing.”