Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday that studies show a booster dose of its vaccine offered a ninefold increase in antibodies compared with the vaccine on its own.
The studies, released by Johnson & Johnson, come as the U.S. gears up next month to offer a third dose for those who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The Johnson & Johnson announcement said studies showed a booster dose of its vaccine showed "a rapid and robust increase in spike-binding antibodies, ninefold higher than 28 days after the primary single-dose vaccination." The company said it was working with federal officials, including the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on next steps to boost the effects of the vaccine and ready a possible booster shot.
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Accountable care organizations don't lower costs, and may actually raise them, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The Aug. 13 study evaluated financial performance data from all four CMS ACO programs from 2005 to 2018. The researchers — Kip Sullivan, member of the advisory board of Health Care for All Minnesota, and James Kahn, MD, emeritus professor of health policy at the University of California San Francisco — looked at net cost to CMS, or gross savings in medical billing minus bonus payments to ACOs.
What the study authors found is overall, ACOs largely broke even. When CMS subtracted bonuses from gross savings, the ACOs either lost or saved a few tenths of a percent.
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Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not clear how healthcare utilization and spending would change. Although one might expect health costs to increase during a pandemic, there were other factors driving spending and utilization down.
In spring of 2020, healthcare use and spending dropped precipitously due to cancellations of elective care to increase hospital capacity and social distancing measures to mitigate community spread of the coronavirus. Although telemedicine use increased sharply, it was not enough to compensate for the drop in in-person care. As the year progressed, healthcare use and spending began to rebound as in-person care resumed for hospital and lab services and COVID-19 testing became more widely available. However, overall health spending appears to have dropped slightly in 2020, the first time in recorded history.
As of December 2020, health services spending was down about 2.7% (seasonally adjusted annual rates) and it remained suppressed in January 2021. When adding in spending on prescription drugs, total health spending was down by just about 1.5% as of December 2020 compared to the same time in 2019. The U.S. GDP fell by 3.5% by the end of 2020, meaning that, although health spending dropped, it likely represented a larger share of the economy than in past years.
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ASIPP® is pleased to offer a new feature for
its members to help provide value to you and your practice.
Click here to visit ASIPP®'s newly created site where you can
make purchases on our Amazon Store, learn more about and
join the ASIPP® GPO and ASIPP®’s partnership with
Fedora Billing & Revenue Cycle Management Company.
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Funds to pilot new telehealth services, track outcomes and publish research will establish an evidence base for future telehealth programs.
The Biden administration is investing more than $19 million to strengthen telehealth services in rural and underserved communities.
These investments are being distributed to 36 award recipients through the Health Resources and Services Administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The funding expands telehealth innovation, including funds for incubators to pilot new telehealth services, track outcomes and publish telehealth research that will establish an evidence base for future telehealth programs.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are scrutinizing health care providers’ Medicare billings for amniotic injections. These injections are only eligible for Medicare reimbursement in limited circumstances, and providers that bill Medicare for non-reimbursable amniotic injections are at risk for facing allegations of Medicare fraud.
Among other means of enforcement, the DOJ has begun sending civil investigative demands (CIDs) to health care providers suspected of improperly billing Medicare for amniotic injections. These are administrative subpoenas that do not require judicial approval but are subject to judicial enforcement. CMS is also instructing its fee-for-service auditors to pay attention to providers’ amniotic injection billings; and, due to the limited purposes for which these injections are eligible for Medicare reimbursement, many providers that have high volumes of these billings are at risk for facing substantial recoupment liability (in addition to other civil or criminal penalties).
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While the CDC has stopped reporting breakthrough infections that do not end up in hospitalization, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has recently started to publish the breakdown of new COVID-19 infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. While the numbers are just a snapshot of one state and one month, in this case, July, they do give an impression of how infections, hospitalization, and death rates differ between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
In July 2021, around 125 breakthrough infections happened per 100,000 fully vaccinated Wisconsinites, compared with around 369 cases per 100,000 inhabitants of the state who had not been fully vaccinated. At a vaccination rate of around 50 percent in the state in July, this means that around 3 in 4 new cases occurred in unvaccinated people. That would have made the COVID-19 vaccines in the state 66 percent effective in preventing infection in real-world conditions opposite unvaccinated people, as for every three unvaccinated Wisconsinites who were infected with COVID-19, two vaccinated people were spared an infection, assuming that both groups had the same exposure to the virus on average.
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A proposed LCD on Epidural Procedures for Pain Management services was announced on June 10, 2021. This nationwide policy contains many onerous changes that will detrimentally affect patient access to care. ASIPP has written comment letters with detailed explanations of the issues and needed changes to each Medicare Contractor. The following are examples of the ASIPP comment letters:
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Pain Medicine Case Reports (PMCR) and Editor-in-Chief Alaa Abd-Elsayed, MD, PhD would like to invite you to submit case reports and case series to the PMCR journal. Your article will be published free of charge.
Open access journals are freely available online for immediate worldwide open access to the full text of published articles. There is no subscription fee for open access journals. Open access journals are no different from traditional subscription-based journals: they undergo the same peer-review and quality control as any other scholarly journal.
Interested in becoming a member of the PMCR Editorial Board?
Editorial board members are asked to review 2-6 manuscripts per year. Please submit your most up-to-date CV to sgold@asipp.org for consideration.
For more information or to submit your articles, click here.
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| CASE REPORT |
Hitoaki Sato, MD, PhD, Kyohei Ueno, MD, Yasushi Motoyama, MD, PhD,
Yoichi Uozumi, MD, PhD, and Satoshi Mizobuchi, MD, PhD
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although there have been reports of Raeder’s syndrome developing after carotid artery dissection, to our knowledge, no case of Raeder’s syndrome occurring after carotid stenting has been reported.
CASE REPORT: A 46-year-old man was urgently treated with a self-expanding stent for idiopathic right carotid artery dissection. However, the patient complained of moderate oppressive pain in the right orbit and forehead immediately after stent placement. Further examination revealed a right eye miosis and right ptosis. No anhidrosis was noted. A diagnosis of Raeder’s syndrome was made based on partial Horner’s syndrome and pain in the first branch of the trigeminal nerve. We noticed that he had hypertension and started antihypertensive medication. After starting the antihypertensive medication, his blood pressure stabilized, and his periorbital pain disappeared dramatically as his blood pressure fell. However, Horner’s symptoms (miosis and ipsilateral ptosis) were still present.
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| SYSTEMATIC REVIEW |
Chenchen Tian, MD, Yung Lee, MD, Yvgeniy Oparin, MD, Dennis Hong, MD, and Harsha Shanthanna, MD, PhD
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients undergoing bariatric surgery present unique analgesic challenges, including poorly controlled pain, increased prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea, and opioid-induced respiratory depression. The transversus abdominis plane (TAP) has been demonstrated to be a safe and effective component of multimodal analgesia for a variety of abdominal surgeries.
OBJECTIVE: To determine the benefits of the TAP block on postoperative analgesia and recovery in patients undergoing bariatric surgery.
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| SYSTEMATIC REVIEW |
Laxmaiah Manchikanti, MD, Emilija Knezevic, Nebojsa Nick Knezevic, MD, PhD, Mahendra R. Sanapati, MD, Srinivasa Thota, MD, Alaa Abd-Elsayed, MD, and Joshua A. Hirsch, MD
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Epidural injections are one of the commonly performed procedures in managing low back and lower extremity pain. In the past, Pinto et al and Chou et al performed systematic reviews and meta-analyses with a recent update from Oliveira et al showing lack of effectiveness of epidural steroid injections in managing lumbar radiculopathy. In contrast, multiple other systematic reviews and meta-analyses have supported the efficacy and use of epidural injections utilizing fluoroscopic guidance.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy of 3 categories of epidural injections for lumbar radiculopathy or sciatica performed utilizing saline with steroids, local anesthetic alone, or steroids with local anesthetic.
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September 18, 2021
Kansas Society of Interventional Pain Physicians ANNUAL MEETING
Location: Intercontinental Kansas City at The Plaza
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Since this malpractice insurance program officially launched in November 2018, ASIPP has signed up hundreds of providers with an average savings of 30%. This is professional liability insurance tailored to our specialty and will stand up for us and defend our practices.
Norcal Mutual is 'A' Rated by AM best and is license in all 50 states. To read a few important points to keep in mind about the program, including discounts, administrative defense, cyber coverage, aggressive claims handling, and complimentary award-winning risk management CME activities, click here.
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ASIPP® is now offering our members the benefit of a unique revenue cycle management/ billing service. We have received a tremendous amount of interest in the ASIPP® billing and coding program.
Click here to learn more about the negotiated rate for practices and more!
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ASIPP® has formed a partnership with Henry Schein and PedsPal, a national GPO that has a successful history of negotiating better prices on medical supplies and creating value-added services for the independent physician. Working with MedAssets, PedsPal provides excellent pricing on products like contrast media that alleviate some of the financial pressures you experience today.
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up-to-date news related to you, your practice, and your patients!
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