Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Eli Lilly’s 340B Ultimatum Forecasts A New Drugmaker-Hospital Battle
Modern Healthcare: Eli Lilly's 340B Claims Policy Sets Up New Fight With Hospitals
Eli Lilly’s ultimatum that it will cut off 340B drug discounts to hospitals that refuse to share claims data sets up another legal battle between drugmakers and providers. On Monday, the company told federal regulators it would withhold 340B drug savings from hospitals starting next week if they do not disclose pharmacy claims data. Eli Lilly executives have said they need the data to root out waste, such as duplicative discounts across government programs. (Kacik, 6/3)
Stat: HaloMD Faces Fourth Insurer Lawsuit Over No Surprises Act Disputes
A fourth major health insurer is suing HaloMD over its use of the No Surprises Act’s arbitration process, arguing that the middleman deceived arbitrators by sending them a “sham letter” and misleading price data. Highmark Health, a Pennsylvania-based Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee with over 7 million members, claims in a complaint filed June 1 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania that HaloMD and one of its clients, a neuromonitoring provider called Bromedicon, submitted more than 450 ineligible disputes with the company and won more than $3.9 million. Like the three Blue Cross plans before it, Highmark wants those awards tossed and its money returned. (Bannow, 6/3)
AP: Judge Shuts Out Press And Public In Luigi Mangione's State Murder Case Hearing
A hearing in Luigi Mangione ’s state murder case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was held in secret Wednesday after the judge shut out the press and public without explanation. New York Judge Gregory Carro said he sealed the virtual proceeding at the request of the defense but provided no other details, raising questions about transparency in the closely watched case. Court hearings in the U.S. are presumptively open to the public, but judges are permitted to close them in certain circumstances, such as to protect sensitive or confidential information. (Sisak, 6/3)
San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco's New Kaiser Hospital Will Have Sky Lounge, Garden
Kaiser Permanente has filed proposed plans for its new hospital in San Francisco’s Anza Vista neighborhood. Upon completion in 2033, it will be Kaiser’s first new hospital in the city in more than 70 years. (Ho, 6/2)
On technology and AI —
Bloomberg: 23andMe Relaunches As Nonprofit With Goal To Reach 100 Million Users
The founder of 23andMe Research Institute wants to reach 100 million users, an ambitious goal after the seller of DNA testing kits emerged from bankruptcy as a nonprofit. 23andMe has the DNA of about 13 million users who mailed in saliva samples in exchange for data about their genetic code. In an interview with Bloomberg’s The Circuit with Emily Chang, Anne Wojcicki said it needs to expand its customer base dramatically. “To do things we want to do, particularly in an AI world, you want hundreds of millions” of users, she said. (Smith and Chang, 6/3)
HR Dive: AI Adoption Surges, But Healthcare Providers Worry About Deskilling
AI has become the healthcare sector’s most prominent technology in recent years, igniting hopes the technology could ameliorate workforce shortages and assist with a range of tasks from documenting patient care to analyzing reams of health data. And providers have moved from experimenting with the technology to using it frequently at work, according to the Wolters Kluwer report, which surveyed more than 350 healthcare professionals and over 250 patients. (6/3)
Stat: Patients Turn To AI Scribes To Keep Track Of Visits
Patients are getting used to being recorded in the doctor’s office. More than a quarter of U.S. practices now use AI-based listening tools called ambient scribes, which capture visits in real time and draft clinical notes for clinicians to enter into patients’ medical records. But what happens when it’s the patient doing the recording? (Palmer, 6/4)
Pharmaceuticals —
MedPage Today: CAR T-Cell Therapy Enabled Kidney Transplant In Highly Sensitized Patients
Patients highly sensitized to HLA successfully underwent kidney transplantation after desensitization with the use of dual chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. In a safety run-in cohort of an ongoing phase I trial, two patients received lymphodepleting chemotherapy followed by an infusion of both CD19-targeted and B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeted CAR T cells to eliminate the cellular sources of preformed anti-HLA antibodies, reported Ali Naji, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania's Smilow Center for Translational Research in Philadelphia, and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). (Monaco, 6/3)
The Wall Street Journal: Your Brain On Anesthesia: Could Be More Like A Coma Than You Think
One minute you’re talking, the next you’re out cold. But what’s actually going on when you are under anesthesia? We often think of anesthesia as putting us in a deep sleep. But new research suggests it could actually be closer to being in a coma than previously thought. And there’s still lots we don’t know about how these drugs work on the brain, even though thousands of patients undergo a general anesthetic every day. (Woodward, 6/3)
