First Edition: April 19, 2024

KFF Health News: He Thinks His Wife Died In An Understaffed Hospital. Now He’s Trying To Change The Industry
For the past year, police Detective Tim Lillard has spent most of his waking hours unofficially investigating his wife’s death. The question has never been exactly how Ann Picha-Lillard died on Nov. 19, 2022: She succumbed to respiratory failure after an infection put too much strain on her weakened lungs. She was 65. For Tim Lillard, the question has been why. (Wells, 4/19)

KFF Health News: Newsom Offers A Compromise To Protect Indoor Workers From Heat
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has compromised on long-sought rules that would protect indoor workers from extreme heat, saying tens of thousands of prison and jail employees — and prisoners — would have to wait for relief. The deal comes a month after the administration unexpectedly rejected sweeping heat standards for workers in sweltering warehouses, steamy kitchens, and other dangerously hot job sites. (Young, 4/18)

KFF Health News: In San Francisco’s Chinatown, A CEO Works With The Community To Bolster Hospital 
Chinese Hospital, located in the heart of this city’s legendary Chinatown, struggles with many of the same financial and demographic challenges that plague small independent hospitals in underserved areas across the country. Many of its patients are aging Chinese speakers with limited incomes who are reliant on Medicare and Medi-Cal, which pay less than commercial insurance and often don’t fully cover provider costs. (Wolfson, 4/19)

KFF Health News' 'What The Health?' Podcast: Too Big To Fail? Now It’s 'Too Big To Hack'
Congress this week had the chance to formally air grievances over the cascading consequences of the Change Healthcare cyberattack, and lawmakers from both major parties agreed on one culprit: consolidation in health care. Plus, about a year after states began stripping people from their Medicaid rolls, a new survey shows nearly a quarter of adults who were disenrolled are now uninsured. (4/18)

The Washington Post: Biden Title IX Rules Set To Protect Trans Students, Sexual Abuse Survivors 
The Biden administration on Friday finalized sweeping new rules barring schools from discriminating against transgender students and ordering significant changes for how schools adjudicate claims of sexual harassment and assault on campus. The long-awaited regulation represents the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. Title IX is best known for ushering in equal treatment for women in sports, but it also governs how schools handle complaints of sexual harassment and assault, a huge issue on many college campuses. (Meckler, 4/19)

Los Angeles Blade: GOP AGs Abused Power Demanding Trans Medical Records
In a 10-page report released on Tuesday by staff for the Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the Republican attorneys general of Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, and Texas are accused of using “abusive legal demands” to collect the medical records of transgender patients in furtherance of the AGs’ “ideological and political goals.” According to the document, which is titled “How State Attorneys General TargetTransgender Youth and Adults by Weaponizing the Medicaid Program and their Health Oversight Authority,” the AGs used specious or misleading legal pretexts to justify their issuance of civil investigative demands to healthcare providers.(Kane, 4/17)

Modern Healthcare: Feds Launch Healthcare Antitrust Reporting Portal
The Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department and Health and Human Services Department have created an online portal for the general public to report potentially anticompetitive practices in the healthcare sector. The portal, HealthyCompetition.gov, is the latest effort from government agencies and the Biden administration to bolster competition in healthcare markets with the hope of lowering care and prescription drug costs, according to an FTC news release Thursday. The portal lists examples of the types of healthcare business practices that can hinder competition, including consolidation, joint ventures and roll-ups. (DeSilva, 4/18)

CIDRAP: Global Health Groups Propose New Terminology For Pathogens That Spread Through The Air 
Well into the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were reluctant to use terms like "airborne," "airborne transmission," and "aerosol transmission" to describe the spread of the virus through the air, while other experts used various definitions to describe the phenomenon, sowing confusion about how the disease was circulating. An international group has been grappling with the issue, and today the experts laid out their deliberations in a report and proposed new agreed-on terminology for pathogens that transmit "through the air," which include not only SARS-CoV-2, but also influenza, measles, MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus), SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and tuberculosis. (Schnirring, 4/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: California To Stop Posting COVID Hospitalization Data, Following CDC
California will no longer provide weekly updates to the public on COVID-19 and flu hospital admissions because the federal regulation that requires hospitals to report the data will end after April 30. As a result, new hospital admissions for both viruses — key indicators of severe COVID and influenza illness in a community — will no longer appear on the state’s respiratory virus dashboard. (Ho, 4/18)

Stat: Avian Flu In Cattle Is Spreading; Scientists Want More Data On H5N1 
With H5N1 bird flu spreading to more dairy cow herds, scientists and pandemic experts in this country and abroad are calling on the U.S. government to release more information to help them assess the risk the outbreaks pose to cattle operations and people. (Branswell, 4/18)

Los Angeles Times: As Avian Flu Spreads, A Disturbing Question: Is Our Food System Built On Poop?
If it’s true that you are what you eat, then most beef-eating Americans consist of a smattering of poultry feathers, urine, feces, wood chips and chicken saliva, among other food items. As epidemiologists scramble to figure out how dairy cows throughout the Midwest became infected with a strain of highly pathogenic avian flu ... they’re looking at a standard “recycling” practice employed by thousands of farmers across the country: The feeding of animal waste and parts to livestock raised for human consumption. (Rust, 4/18)

Reuters: Supreme Court Considers EMTALA Preemption Of State Abortion Bans
On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States, consolidated cases asking whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) preempts, under certain emergency circumstances, an Idaho law banning most abortions. The Supreme Court's decision may chart a course for numerous federal and state cases brought in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that question the interplay between state laws limiting abortion, medical exceptions to those laws, and EMTALA. (4/18)

Axios Phoenix: Arizona Doctors Unlikely To Perform Illegal Abortions Even If They Won't Be Prosecuted 
Attorney General Kris Mayes' promise that she won't prosecute doctors for violating the soon-enforceable abortion ban likely isn't enough to persuade doctors to break the law, Arizona abortion providers tell Axios Phoenix. (Boehm, 4/18)

NBC News: Some Pharmacists Fear Jail Time Over Murky Abortion Laws
Alarm bells ring in Matt Murray’s head when a prescription for misoprostol comes through his independent pharmacy in Boise, Idaho. ... The medication is legal — approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent stomach ulcers — but it can also be used for abortions, which became illegal in Idaho with few exceptions when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. (Edwards and Kopf, 4/18)

New Hampshire Public Radio: Abortion Data Collection Bill Latest Flare Up Over Reproductive Rights In NH
On a party-line vote, Republicans in the New Hampshire Senate last week approved a bill that would require abortion providers to share certain data about the procedures they perform with state public health officials. Forty-six other states already have similar laws in place, making New Hampshire an outlier in the dissemination of abortion statistics. (Bookman, 4/18)

Capital B News: As Abortion Bans In Florida And Arizona Loom, Black Families Are Left Vulnerable
Abortion attacks aren’t slowing down as the clock ticks on Florida’s six-week ban and Arizona’s Supreme Court has paved the way to reinforce a Civil War-era law that criminalizes nearly all abortions. The consequences could be catastrophic for Black reproductive health, exacerbating existing disparities in access to care and alarming rates of maternal mortality, advocates and health-care providers fear. (Snipe, 4/18)

AP: Emergency Rooms Refused To Treat Pregnant Women, Leaving One To Miscarry In A Lobby Restroom
One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal. (Seitz, 4/19)

NBC News: Zepbound Weight Loss Drug Shortage Has No Immediate End In Sight, Eli Lilly Says
Despite Eli Lilly’s assurances about an ample supply of its new weight loss drug Zepbound, the company is now facing widespread shortages just months after its approval. While the drugmaker is working to resolve the issue, a quick fix is unlikely, it says, with no immediate end to the shortage in sight. ... As of Wednesday, all but one dosage was listed as in “limited availability” through the end of June on the FDA’s website. (Lovelace Jr., Romans and Herzberg, 4/18)

The New York Times: Millions Of Girls In Africa Will Miss HPV Shots After Merck Production Problem 
Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year. Merck has notified Gavi, the international organization that helps low- and middle-income countries deliver lifesaving immunizations, and UNICEF, which procures the vaccines, that it will deliver only 18.8 million of the 29.6 million doses it was contracted to deliver in 2024, Gavi said. (Nolen, 4/18)

Reuters: US FDA Mandates Label Updates On CAR-T Cancer Therapies 
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday cancer therapies that use CAR-T technology will require changes to the so-called "boxed warning" to highlight the serious risk of T-cell blood cancer in patients who use these therapies. The health regulator has required related updates to other sections of the label such as warnings and precautions, postmarketing experience, patient counseling information and medication guide. (4/18)

Reuters: J&J Wins Trial Over Florida Woman Who Claimed Its Baby Powder Caused Her Cancer 
A Florida jury on Thursday concluded that Johnson & Johnson's baby powder talc product did not cause the ovarian cancer of a Florida woman who died in 2019. The lawsuit was brought by family members of Patricia Matthey, a Sarasota County resident who used Johnson's baby powder daily from 1965 until August 2016, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, according to her family's lawsuit. (Knauth, 4/18)

Minnesota Public Radio: Facing Financial Problems, Mahnomen Hospital Cuts In-Patient Care
It may sound strange, but the hospital in Mahnomen, Minnesota won’t have hospital stays for its patients anymore. The tiny hospital is converting to a rural emergency hospital, leaving many rural Minnesotans far from in-patient care. It’s the first to do so in Minnesota after the option was created in at the start of 2023, but probably won’t be the last. (Wurzer and Younger, 4/18)

Bloomberg: Acentra Health Slashes Interest Rate In Private Debt Refinancing
Acentra Health LLC cut its interest rate on a term loan, part of a larger transaction with a group of private credit lenders that refinanced existing loans and raised additional debt. The healthcare technology solutions company owned by Carlyle Group Inc. will now have a margin 5.5 percentage points above the Secured Overnight Financing Rate on a $666 million loan, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named discussing a private transaction. (Seligson, 4/18)

Modern Healthcare: Included Health Moves Into Specialty Care
Included Health and other companies that offer digital health products to employers are facing an uncertain market, with would-be clients sometimes overwhelmed by options and potentially skeptical of virtual-first services. According to Included Health President Robin Glass, simplification is the answer. “Employers are standing up and saying they have 20 different benefits that they're managing and it’s just too much,” Glass said in an interview. (Perna, 4/18)

Modern Healthcare: Elevance’s Medicaid, Medicare Losses Offset By Commercial Gains
Elevance Health's first-quarter losses in its Medicaid and Medicare businesses were partially offset by gains in its commercial plans. The company’s membership dropped 3.9% to 46.2 million enrollees, compared with 48.1 million in the same period last year, executives told financial analysts during its first-quarter earnings call Thursday. Medicaid redeterminations and changes to its geographic footprint drove the membership decline. (Berryman, 4/18)

Stat: Medicare Says Breakthrough Device Reimbursement Rule To Come By Summer
A federal rule aiming to make reimbursement for breakthrough devices easier is slated for early summer, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official said on Thursday. (Lawrence, 4/19)

Stat: Dana-Farber Retracts Science Paper As Part Of Data Integrity Review
An ongoing investigation into data integrity at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has resulted in a string of retractions, the latest of which is a 2006 Science paper co-authored by institute president and CEO Laurie Glimcher. (Chen, 4/18)

St. Louis Public Radio: Wash U Settles Justice Department's Discrimination Lawsuit 
The U.S. Justice Department settled a lawsuit Monday with the Washington University School of Medicine for discriminating against an employee based on his citizenship status. In a lawsuit filed on April 14, 2022, the individual alleged that the medical school violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by discriminating against the employee based on his citizenship status and later retaliated against him for complaining. (Henderson, 4/19)

Politico: Lawmaker Withdraws Sweeping California Bill To Expand Assisted Dying 
The author of a California bill that aimed to create the most expansive assisted dying law in the country has pulled the proposal, meaning it won’t be considered this year. San Diego area Sen. Catherine Blakespear confirmed after POLITICO first reported that she removed her proposal, Senate bill 1196, from consideration before its first hearing, which was supposed to be Monday. (Bluth, 4/17)

Los Angeles Times: California Sets Limit For Chromium-6 In Drinking Water
After years of analysis and debate, California regulators have adopted a nation-leading drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen found in water supplies across the state. The dangers of the toxic heavy metal, also known as chromium-6, became widely known in the 1990s after a court case that then-legal clerk Erin Brockovich helped develop against Pacific Gas & Electric for contaminating water in the town of Hinkley in the Mojave Desert. (James, 4/18)

AP: BNSF Railway Says It Didn't Know About Asbestos That's Killed Hundreds In Montana Town 
BNSF Railway attorneys are expected to argue before jurors Friday that the railroad should not be held liable for the lung cancer deaths of two former residents of an asbestos-contaminated Montana town, one of the deadliest sites in the federal Superfund pollution program. Attorneys for the Warren Buffett-owned company say the railroad’s corporate predecessors didn’t know the vermiculite it hauled over decades from a nearby mine was filled with hazardous microscopic asbestos fibers. (Brown and Hanson, 4/19)

NPR: New Studies Find Thousands Of Annual U.S. Deaths Linked To Wildfire Smoke
New research shows that the health consequences of wildfire smoke exposure stretch well beyond the smoky days themselves, contributing to nearly 16,000 deaths each year across the U.S., according to a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) analysis released in April. The analysis warns that number could grow to nearly 30,000 deaths a year by the middle of the century as human-driven climate change increases the likelihood of large, intense, smoke-spewing wildfires in the Western U.S. and beyond. (Borunda, 4/18)

The Denver Post: National Jewish Study Looks To Sand As Possible Explanation For Combat Veterans’ Breathing Problems
A new study at Denver’s National Jewish Health found an unexpected potential culprit for lung disease in some combat veterans: silica, which is one of the most common elements in dust, soil and sand. (Wingerter, 4/18)

St. Louis Public Radio: St. Louis Aldermen Pass Bill To Pay Residents' Medical Debt 
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen this week unanimously approved a bill that would spend $800,000 of federal coronavirus relief funds to pay residents’ medical debts. Proponents say the bill would cancel millions of dollars in unpaid bills, freeing residents of a heavy financial and emotional burden. (Fentem, 4/18)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Struggles To Diversify Its Mental Health Workforce 
Lynette Carrillo felt alone. Looking around at her small doctoral psychology class at Texas Woman’s University in 2021, she realized she was the only Spanish speaker. At that point, Carillo had almost grown used to it. After nearly a decade pursuing degrees at Angelo State University in San Angelo and TWU in Denton, she could count on one hand how many professors and classmates came from diverse backgrounds. It’s just how the mental health field is, she thought. (Simpson, 4/19)

The Mercury News: Move Over, Fentanyl? Stimulant Overdose Deaths Are Rising Fast
Deadly, addictive fentanyl has certainly earned the spotlight when it comes to overdose deaths — but carnage from stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine is rising at a much faster clip. Over the span of a single year, heroin deaths dropped almost 34% nationwide, while deaths from natural and semi-synthetic drugs (morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone) dropped nearly 13%. Methadone deaths dropped 1.1%, according to federal data presented at the recent American Society of Addiction Medicine conference in Dallas. (Sforza, 4/18)

NPR: Fake Botox Sickened Patients In Several States. Here's How To Avoid It
Beware, Botox users: Public health authorities are warning that counterfeit versions of the injectable are circulating — and have already made patients sick — in several U.S. states. Nineteen people reported harmful reactions to botulinum toxin injections as of last Friday, including nine who were hospitalized, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a release. They are located in nine states: Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and Washington. (Treisman, 4/19)

USA Today: Recall Issued For Trader Joe's Basil After Salmonella Poisons 13
Trader Joe’s basil is making people across the country sick, with the grocery chain store confirming Wednesday that the product was connected with a multistate salmonella outbreak. A number of agencies, including the FDA and CDC, are looking into the outbreak, which is linked to “Infinite Herbs-brand organic basil packed in 2.5-oz clamshell packaging” sold between February 1 through April 6. (Encinas, 4/18)

Reuters: Dengue Cases Surge By Nearly 50% In Americas Amid 'Emergency Situation', UN Agency Says
Dengue cases have created an "emergency situation" in the Americas, although cases in hotspots Argentina and Brazil appear to have stabilized, the head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Thursday. PAHO, a United Nations agency, has confirmed more than 5.2 million cases of dengue across the Americas this year, an over 48% jump from the 3.5 million cases the group reported late last month. (4/18)

Bloomberg: WHO’s New AI Health Chatbot SARAH Gets Many Medical Questions Wrong
The World Health Organization is wading into the world of AI to provide basic health information through a human-like avatar. But while the bot responds sympathetically to users’ facial expressions, it doesn’t always know what it’s talking about. SARAH, short for Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health, is a virtual health worker that’s available to talk 24/7 in eight different languages to explain topics like mental health, tobacco use and healthy eating. (Nix, 4/18)

Reuters: World Bank Sets Goal Of Expanding Healthcare To 1.5 Billion People By 2030 
The World Bank Group on Thursday unveiled a new goal to help countries deliver affordable healthcare to 1.5 billion people by 2030 by expanding services to remote areas, cutting fees and other financial barriers and focusing on lifetime care. The development lender said it would deploy financing, its own health expertise and new partnerships with private-sector firms, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups in reaching the target, which it defines as a person receiving treatment by a health care worker through an in-person visit or a telehealth appointment. (Lawder, 4/18)