Stretched ERs Report Wave Of Non-Covid Patients, Many Who Put Off Care

NPR: ERs Are Now Swamped With Seriously Ill Patients — But Most Don't Even Have COVID
Inside the Emergency Department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff are struggling to care for patients who are showing up much sicker than they've ever seen. Tiffani Dusang, the ER's nursing director, practically vibrates with pent-up anxiety, looking at all the patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the beige walls of the hospital hallways. "It's hard to watch," she says in her warm Texan twang. But there's nothing she can do. The ER's 72 rooms are already filled. (Wells, 10/26)

CIDRAP: US Hospitals Took Huge, Unequal Financial Hit During COVID, Studies Show
Three new studies describe how the COVID-19 pandemic cratered the finances of many US hospitals, one finding that most federal relief funds went to the already best-resourced facilities and the other two showing the devastating monetary effects of delaying or canceling surgeries. In a study published late last week in JAMA Health Forum, RAND Corp. researchers traced High-Impact Distribution Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to 952 hospitals. Data, which were taken from hospital cost reports in the Healthcare Cost Report Information System, were analyzed from December 2020 through June 2021. (Van Beusekom, 10/25)

Modern Healthcare: Federal Court Rules Against Nursing Homes In COVID-19 Cases
A ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week against two nursing homes in New Jersey is the first step in determining how COVID-19 cases will be handled by courts, lawyers say. In the ruling, the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit determined that negligence and wrongful death cases like those alleged against the Andover Subacute & Rehabilitation I & II nursing homes should be handled by the states and are not covered by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, known as the PREP Act, which offers immunity to liability for COVID-19 countermeasures. (Christ, 10/25)

More reporting on care facilities and health systems —

The Wall Street Journal: CVS Health Launches $25 Million Ad Campaign Focused On ‘Healthy’
CVS Health Corp. is introducing its first major ad campaign aiming to show the breadth of its health services and the role that the company played during the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s important to make a statement as a brand on where we think healthcare is going and how we are positioning ourselves,” said Michelle Peluso, executive vice president and chief customer officer at CVS Health, which owns CVS Pharmacy, insurance giant Aetna and other products and services like CVS Kidney Care. “What the pandemic did for us is it forced us to reimagine a lot of things in a really fast timeline,” she said. “We never stepped back to say, what has CVS Health become?” (Bruell, 10/25)

Modern Healthcare: Cedars-Sinai, Houston Methodist To Deploy New Tools From Amazon
Amazon on Monday unveiled a new voice offering for hospitals and health systems, representing yet another step in the Seattle tech giant's push into healthcare. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant next month will offer applications designed for patients to use during a hospital stay as part of Alexa Smart Properties, a division that sells Alexa devices and voice tools to property owners to deploy and centrally manage throughout their organizations. That includes apartments, hotels and senior-living facilities. BayCare in Tampa, Florida; Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles; and Houston Methodist are among health systems that are implementing tools from Alexa Smart Properties. (Kim Cohen, 10/25)

Modern Healthcare: HCA Names New Chief Clinical Officer
Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare on Monday announced the system had promoted Dr. Michael Cuffe to chief clinical officer and executive vice president. Beginning Jan. 1, Cuffe—who joined HCA Healthcare as president and CEO of physician services in 2011—will lead the clinical agenda for the for-profit hospital chain's 183 hospitals and roughly 2,000 ambulatory care sites. That includes leading the system's clinical quality, nursing, care transformation and clinical informatics teams, as well as continuing his oversight of physician services. (Kim Cohen, 10/25)

Miami Herald/ProPublica: Audit Rips Apart Florida Program Created To Aid Brain-Damaged Kids
Case managers at Florida’s $1.5 billion compensation program for catastrophically brain-damaged children didn’t consult specialists to determine whether medications, therapy, medical supplies and surgical procedures were “medically necessary” to the health of children in the plan. They relied on Google instead. That was one of the findings of a state audit released this week of the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA. The audit was ordered after the Miami Herald and ProPublica detailed how NICA has amassed nearly $1.5 billion in assets while sometimes arbitrarily denying or slow-walking care to severely brain-damaged children. (Marbin Miller and Chang, 10/25)

And in pharma and biotech news —

Stat: Licensing Biotech Breakthroughs Is A Mess. Can It Be Fixed?
Students, employees, and professors at a research institution generally pledge that in the event they make some interesting, potentially money-making discovery, they’ll notify their institution’s tech transfer office. This office can go by many different names; some are “technology licensing offices,” others will throw an “innovation” or “knowledge” in there for good measure. But they all serve similar purposes: to ensure the institution and the public will benefit from the intellectual property created under its auspices. (Sheridan, 10/26)

Bloomberg: Novartis May Spin Off Or Sell Ailing Sandoz Generics Unit
Novartis AG may spin off or sell its Sandoz generic-drug unit after it consistently failed to meet expectations, with U.S. sales plummeting this year amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Swiss pharma giant gave itself until the end of next year to decide what to do with the business, which has suffered from price erosion and tough competition. The move comes more than two years after Novartis started making the generics unit more independent, splitting off manufacturing and support functions. (Kresge, 10/26)

Stat: Latest Psilocybin Patent Highlights The Swirling Battle Over Psychedelics Intellectual Property
One of the leading companies racing to develop psychedelics as legal medicines was granted a patent last week for a formulation of psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms — a decision that highlights the increasingly intense battle around intellectual property for potential medicines in this rapidly growing sector. (Goldhill, 10/26)