The Covid-19 pandemic illuminated a vast landscape of misinformation about many topics, science and health chief among them. [Chicago Health]

Since then, information overload continues unabated, and many people are rightfully confused by an onslaught of conflicting health information. Even expert advice is often contradictory.

On top of that, people sometimes deliberately distort research findings to promote a certain agenda. For example, trisodium phosphate is a common food additive in cakes and cookies that is used to improve texture and prevent spoilage, but wellness influencers exploit the fact that a similarly named substance is used in paint and cleaning products to suggest it's dangerous to your health.

More>

###

A new analysis of long COVID patients has identified five distinct subtypes that researchers say will help doctors diagnose the condition.[MedScape]

The new five-type index, developed by federal researchers with the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER COVID Initiative, identified the most common symptoms in 14,000 people with long COVID, with data from an additional 4000 people added to the updated 2024 index.

More> 

###

Call for Speakers- Call for Speakers- IOMC Maternal & Child Health Symposium Due 2.26.2025. 

Here are the areas of interest, and other ideas are welcome. 

• Medical Perspectives
• Social Determinants of Health
• Advocacy in Maternal & Child Health
• Public Health & Policy Implications
• Payors Perspectives (Insurance & Healthcare Finance)
• Transportation & Accessibility Issues

Please prepare a concise one-page proposal stating your speaker(s), title, organization name, and 50-word abstract (max.) for your topic, and contact information fo  consideration. Please send your information to mchsymposium@iomc.org  

Sponsorships Opportunities 

Sponsorships available, contact us @   sponsorship@iomc.org.

###

Value-based care in behavioral health is finally starting to catch up to other areas of healthcare, according to Stuart Lustig, MD, national medical executive for behavioral health strategy and product design at The Cigna Group.  {Becker's Behavioral Health] 

There are several barriers that make it difficult to shift away from fee-for-service payments in behavioral health, Dr. Lustig said. Among them are slower adoption of electronic medical records, a reluctance to measure outcomes and challenges bringing mental health providers into payer networks. 

"All of that has been changing in recent years. More provider groups have gotten bigger, have gotten electronic medical records and have built in the ability to analyze those records and report out on what's happening at an individual level and a population level," he said. 

More>

###

In recent years, the United States has seen an onslaught of legislation aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education, including medical education.1

Although these legislative actions are often construed as focusing only on race, they also explicitly or implicitly target members of sexual and gender minority (SGM)  groups. The deluge of legislative and policy attacks, including a slew of executive orders in the current administration, is a component of a larger political movement that seeks to exclude people who have been historically underrepresented and marginalized in many sectors of society, including medicine. These policies threaten the composition and integrity of the health care workforce and will ultimately worsen the health of the populace. 

More> 

###

....Health care spending in the US totaled $3.8 trillion in 2019 and is projected to reach more than $7 trillion by 2031.¹ Within the US, spending varies dramatically across states, although many key drivers of health care spending, such as access to care, service prices, disease and injury prevalence, and underlying need for health care, vary at more local levels.^2,3 Understanding how health care resources are distributed across counties, types of care, and health conditions—and identifying the payers funding this care—is essential to informing policy decisions and driving areas of further research. [JAMA}

Currently, most local and disease-specific estimates of US health care spending are incomplete or out of date. Estimates of health care spending are available at the national level through National Health Expenditure Projections¹ and at the state level through State Health Expenditure Accounts,^3,4 but these estimates are broken down only by type of care and payer. Disease-specific spending estimates are available for certain conditions, such as diabetes⁵ and Alzheimer disease,⁶ but typically only for select years and most often for the US as a whole. Health care spending reports are also available for specific payers, such as employer-sponsored insurance⁷ and Medicare,⁸ but they lack further disaggregation. Previous work from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Disease Expenditure Project has contributed to a more complete understanding of health care spending in the US: decomposing changes over time into key drivers of spending increases,⁹ attributing spending to modifiable risk factors,¹⁰ assessing spending effectiveness,¹¹ and considering spending and utilization (eg, the number of visits, admissions, or filled prescriptions) differences by race and ethnicity,¹² but in all of these cases, the analysis was conducted at the national level and is not detailed enough to provide a comprehensive view of health care spending.

More> 

###

If you haven’t caught the flu this season, perhaps you know someone who has, or are concerned about the virus infiltrating your household. We are, by at least one measure, in the midst of the nation’s worst flu season in recent decades. [ Fortune Well]

At least 24 million illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations, and 13,000 influenza-linked deaths—including 57 children—have plagued the U.S. this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Flu-related emergency department visits necessitated the CDC’s most severe “very high” ranking as of Feb. 7, as did influenza virus activity in national wastewater samples. What’s more, the percentage of outpatient and emergency department visits concerning patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) hit a season high of 7.8% the week ended Feb. 1, greater than any other week since at least the 1997–98 flu season.

More>

###

For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, more people in the U.S. died of influenza than from COVID-19 in the week ending on Jan. 25, according to weekly figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [KFF Health News & CBS]

For the week ending on Jan. 25, nearly 1.7% of all deaths nationwide were attributed to the flu, compared to roughly 1.5% being the result of COVID-19, according to CDC data. Rates of influenza hospitalizations are more than three times higher than COVID-19 hospitalizations amid this season's record wave of flu infections.

More>

###

For more than a decade, Kaiser Permanente has been under the microscope for shortcomings in mental health care, even as it is held in high esteem on the medical side.

This story also ran on The Orange County Register. It can be republished for free.

About ‘Asking Never Hurts’

A series of columns by Bernard J. Wolfson addressing the challenges consumers face in California’s health care landscape.

We can learn from this...applies to more than California. 
Read More Columns

In 2013, California regulators fined the insurer $4 million for failing to reduce wait times, giving patients inaccurate information, and improperly tracking appointment data. And in 2023, KP agreed to pay $50 million, the largest penalty ever levied by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, for failing to provide timely care, maintain a sufficient number of mental health providers, and oversee its providers effectively.

Now, Kaiser Permanente is back in the hot seat as mental health workers in Southern California wage a strike that’s in its fourth month. KP therapists and union representatives accuse the HMO giant of saddling workers with excessive caseloads and often forcing patients to wait twice as long as the state allows for follow-up appointments. They say that the staff is burned out and that this work environment makes it hard to recruit clinicians, exacerbating the staffing problem.

More> 

###

Department of Healthcare and Family Services acting Director Elizabeth Whitehorn told stakeholders last week that “chaos and uncertainty” at the federal level has them scrambling to understand the potential impact on the state’s Medicaid program and related initiatives. [Health News Illinois] 

She told members of the Medicaid Advisory Committee they have not had any issues accessing the federal portal to process Medicaid payments since it briefly went down last month.

However, the main concern right now is the potential for Medicaid cuts.

Whitehorn said Congress is considering several potential changes to Medicaid, but department officials are focused on two: implementing a per capita cap to limit federal Medicaid funding to states and repealing the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.

Roughly 770,000 Illinoisans could be affected by the repeal of the expansion, Whitehorn said, with the state receiving $7.4 billion to provide coverage for them.

Illinois is one of nine states to have a so-called trigger law on the books that would remove that population from the rolls if the federal government reduces the level of federal match to anything under 90 percent.

“We are very concerned — extremely concerned — about how far these will go, and what they would do to our program here in Illinois and across the country,” Whitehorn said.

She told committee members the only solution they currently have is to promote the importance of ACA expansion and the negative healthcare impact of cuts.

As far as initiatives like the 1115 waiver, Whitehorn said they have received approval for the implementation of the health-related social needs portion related to housing, food and nutrition, and the department is moving forward with those.

But other steps like evaluation plans and monitoring plans have to receive federal approval, and Whitehorn said there is no guarantee the Trump administration will not either “slow walk” those negotiations or even “flaunt the law” and just cancel the waiver or refuse to pay for anything.

She said the agency’s attorneys are currently researching what steps to take if the federal government revokes any of the previously approved programs.

Medicaid Administrator Kelly Cunningham said one bright spot is the positive working relationship they have with staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We're trying to make sure that we continue to cultivate those and take advantage of them where we can,” she said. “So from that perspective, I feel hopeful that our voices will be heard.”

###