News

The CDC released the first real world data February 15 in a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that infants younger than 6 months were overall 61% less likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 if their mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy through completion of a 2-dose primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccine series with either Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) or Moderna (Spikevax).

The Department of Health and Human Services, through the Health Resources and Services Administration, awarded nearly $55 million to 29 HRSA-funded health centers to increase healthcare access and quality for underserved populations through virtual care such as telehealth, remote patient monitoring, digital patient tools, and health information technology platforms.

The Community Aging in Place—Advancing Better Living for Elders (CAPABLE) program developed at the university’s nursing school is designed to keep older people who are frail, have chronic medical conditions or can’t complete activities of daily living in their homes by providing care and help from conventional healthcare professionals — nurses, occupational therapists — but also from people who can do minor house repairs.

Medicare and Medicaid programs that serve the most-vulnerable Americans facing SDOH barriers can be major facilitators of appropriate non-emergency transportation to non-medical sites. But how do we determine what is appropriate, and what do we know about transportation services to non-medical sites today?

Briana Contreras, editor of Managed Healthcare Executive spoke with Luis Mosquera, CEO of Health Network One, a provider of specialty benefit management services for health insurers, in this week's episode. In this discussion, Luis and Briana talked about how value-driven decisions in a more value-based market can not only better manage costs for health plans, but create a plan of care to best meet patient’s needs. In order to do this, Luis strongly encouraged healthcare executives to experience alternative payment models and shared what payers should check off their list with a new model.