Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
As Baby Boomers Age, Concerns About The Strain On Family Caregivers Deepen
Strain on family caregivers is alarming many lawmakers and social-service providers. They are pushing for new ways to assist the vast unpaid workforce of people who are crucial in part because they allow more seniors to age in place and reduce reliance on public subsidies such as Medicaid, a major funder of institutional health care for older Americans. 鈥淔amilies have always been the backbone of our system for caring for people,鈥 said Kathy Greenlee, the assistant secretary for aging at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 鈥淩eally, if we didn鈥檛 have them, we couldn鈥檛 afford as a country to monetize their care and we couldn鈥檛 replace, frankly, the love they provide to family members.鈥 (Levitz, 6/3)
The latest public health scare involving a Colorado surgical technician has revealed states have more work ahead in trying to prevent needle-stealing hospital workers from getting hired. Authorities say an HIV-positive surgical tech stole syringes with fentanyl and endangered patients at a suburban Denver hospital - the third incident of this type in the state in less than a decade. Colorado lawmakers are trying to tighten regulations but experts say it is a national concern. (6/3)
Although they account for half of all new sexually transmitted infections, most young people between the ages of 15 and 25 have never been tested for those infections, according to a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. The 2013 survey of 3,953 adolescents and young adults by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 11.5 percent had been tested for a sexually transmitted infection in the previous year, including 17 percent of females and 6 percent of males. (Andrews, 6/3)
And, in other news聽鈥
A group of scientists say they want work toward being able to create a synthetic version of the entire human genetic code in the laboratory. Their hope is that a complete set of synthetic human DNA, known as a genome, could someday lead to important medical breakthroughs. "We just had a revolution in our ability to read genomes," says George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University who is part of the group that outlined the plan Thursday in the journal Science. "The same thing is happening now with writing genomes." (Stein, 6/2)
Spectrum Health is one of eight centers in the U.S. participating in the clinical trial, which uses a device called the organ care system that keeps a heart beating after being removed, lengthening the time it can remain outside the body. 鈥淚t gets put in the device and the device allows it to be infused with warm oxygenated blood and beating, so it's beating almost the entire time it's out of the one body and into the other," said Dr. Theodora Boeve. She is in charge of the team that monitors the heart while enroute for transplant. (Lego, 6/2)
When [Derek] Scott returned to the emergency room two weeks later, again short of breath, he was enrolled in a study assessing the effectiveness of a new home monitoring program overseen by Dr. Mauro Moscucci, medical director of the LifeBridge Health Cardiovascular Institute and chairman of Sinai's department of medicine. Not one of the 15 patients enrolled in the study has returned to the hospital this year, which is a relief to patients and to Sinai, as hospitals are penalized financially by federal and state regulators for unnecessary readmissions. Moscucci said 15 percent to 20 percent usually would be readmitted during that time span. (Cohn, 6/3)
