Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Layoffs At A Blue Cross Blue Shield
Crain's Detroit Business: Blue Cross Blue Shield Of Michigan Makes Voluntary Separation Offers Amid 'Financial Headwinds'
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan plans to make voluntary separation offers to its more than 10,500 employees as the Detroit-based health insurer works to cut administrative costs. The state's largest insurer extended the offer to 8,650 nonunion employees, according to a company statement sent to Modern Healthcare's sister publication Crain's Detroit Business on Monday. It is working to potentially make the same offer to another 2,060 workers represented by the UAW. (Nagl, 9/21)
Houston Chronicle: Young Houston Doctor Dies After Fighting For Her Life In ICU With COVID
A Houston doctor died early Saturday after fighting for her life in an intensive care unit since becoming infected with COVID-19 in July, according to a statement from her family. Adeline Fagan, a 28-year-old New York native who was completing her second year of residency as an OB-GYN in Houston, tested positive for the infection in early July before her condition worsened and she became hospitalized. (Serrano, 9/19)
Modern Healthcare: New Billing And Collections Guidelines Encourage Focus On Racial Equity
Healthcare providers are being pushed to consider whether they're suing people of color at disproportionately high rates, thanks to newly updated guidance on billing and collection practices. The report, published jointly by the Healthcare Financial Management Association and ACA International, a trade group for collection agencies, updates guidelines from 2014. It recommends hospital administrators to report to their boards the rate at which they use extraordinary collection activities like lawsuits or credit reporting, and to incorporate data on patients' race and ethnicity. (Bannow, 9/21)
Modern Healthcare: Georgia Provider Pays HHS $1.5 Million For Data Breach
Athens Orthopedic Clinic will pay $1.5 million to HHS' Office for Civil Rights for potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act violations, the agency said Monday. According to HHS, patient records for more than 200,000 people may have been posted for sale online in June after a hacker used a vendor's credentials to access the Athens Orthopedic electronic healthcare record system. The hacker told Athens Orthopedic it would exchange a complete copy of the stolen database for a ransom payment. (Brady, 9/21)
Modern Healthcare: Setting A Strategy To Maximize Telehealth's Potential
In the blink of an eye, telehealth has gone from nice-to-have to table stakes. Its explosive growth represents the most rapid and unexpected change in medicine in recent memory. How policymakers and payers respond to it will affect the course of our healthcare system for years to come. This revolution was driven, of course, by the response to COVID-19. As front-line workers risked their lives to treat the pandemic's early victims, ambulatory-care providers turned to telehealth to bridge the gaps. State and federal governments cleared away long-standing restrictions on telehealth under the federal public health emergency declaration. Many employers and health plans followed suit. (Margaret O'Kane, 9/21)
In other health care industry news —
Tampa Bay Times: How Can Doctors Better Serve LGBTQ Patients? More Training, Moffitt Says.
Tampa’s Moffitt Cancer Center is set to launch a national study aimed at training more oncologists to better understand the unique needs of their LGBTQ patients and prevent the disparities that often affect their care. The study will expand a Florida-based trial of an online training program developed at Moffitt to include physicians across the country.The program, developed in 2018, is known as COLORS, which stands for Curriculum for Oncologists on LGBTQ populations to Optimize Relevance and Skills. (Snipe, 9/21)
KQED: Lots Of Drugs, Lax Oversight: Former SF Medical Examiner Staffers Say Lab Analyst's Meth Arrest 'Just The Tip Of The Iceberg'
A lab analyst for the San Francisco medical examiner's office had driven more than 700 miles east toting a sealed bag of drug evidence before he was pulled over for speeding in Washington County, Utah. During the Aug. 31 traffic stop, sheriff’s deputies discovered a bag containing “a large crystal looking item,” along with other baggies with suspected crystal meth and white powder. (Small, 9/21)
