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The first angry calls to the Pretty in Pink Boutique began last August, confusing staff at the Franklin, Tenn., provider of wigs, mastectomy bras and other accessories for cancer patients. Medicare recipients from around the country claimed that a company called Pretty in Pink had charged their health insurance companies thousands of dollars for urinary catheters that they never ordered or received. Flooded by dozens of complaints, the boutique launched a webpage in September to explain that its leaders were dumbfounded, too. (Diamond, Weber and Keating, 2/9)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed Thursday to crack down on accrediting organizations following concerns of biased, inconsistent survey results and conflicts of interest. The proposed rule would strengthen CMS’ oversight of accrediting bodies and mandate the organizations reduce conflicts of interest with healthcare facilities, including by limiting fee-based consulting services. The proposal also would standardize accrediting organizations' survey processes. (Devereaux, 2/9)

A growing number of states is imposing new limitations on prior authorization requirements to address provider and patient complaints that health insurance companies are delaying and denying care. Some of these legislative efforts go further than what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed last month for insurers participating in federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the health insurance exchanges. (McAuliff, 2/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: States Target Health Insurers’ ‘Prior Authorization’ Red Tape

Christopher Marks noticed an immediate improvement when his doctor prescribed him the Type 2 diabetes medication Mounjaro last year. The 40-year-old truck driver from Kansas City, Missouri, said his average blood sugar reading decreased significantly and that keeping it within target range took less insulin than before. But when his doctor followed the typical prescribing pattern and increased his dose of Mounjaro — a drug with a wholesale list price of more than $1,000 a month — Marks’ health insurer declined to pay for it. (Sable-Smith, 2/12)

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was admitted into care late Sunday with an apparent bladder issue, after being hospitalized for the second time in a month. His security detail brought him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington with “symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said in a statement. Austin, who in January had been in for treatment for complications from prostate cancer, was moved “for supportive care and close monitoring,” according to a statement from Walter Reed physicians. (Diaz and Wadhams, 2/11)

What is the relationship between aging, memory loss, and overall cognition? That’s a matter of hot debate in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. (Merelli, 2/9)

Moderna is girding itself for a commercial battle with two of the largest vaccine makers in the world— Pfizer and GSK —with the expected launch of its respiratory syncytial virus vaccine later this year. But in an abstract released ahead of a scientific conference scheduled for next week in Mumbai, Moderna presented efficacy data for its experimental RSV shot for older adults, mRNA-1345, that is notably worse than the efficacy data from the same trial the company presented early last year. It isn’t entirely clear why the efficacy results plunged, though the new results reflect an average follow-up with patients that is nearly five months longer. (Nathan-Kazis, 2/9)

Real-world efficacy data from Spain indicate that the RSV drug nirsevimab (Beyfortus) is at least 70% effective at preventing RSV hospitalizations in infants under 9 months old, according to new research in Eurosurveillance. Spain was one of the first countries to introduce nirsevimab as universal RSV prophylaxis (prevention) into its national immunization program for all infants born on April 1, 2023, and after. (Soucheray, 2/9)

The flu virus is hanging on in the U.S., intensifying in some areas of the country after weeks of an apparent national decline. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Friday showed a continued national drop in flu hospitalizations, but other indicators were up — including the number of states with high or very high levels for respiratory illnesses. “Nationally, we can say we’ve peaked, but on a regional level it varies,” said the CDC’s Alicia Budd. “A couple of regions haven’t peaked yet.” (Stobbe, 2/9)

Scientists at Washington University have found that patients hospitalized with the flu can display long-term effects similar to those found in long COVID patients. The researchers found evidence of long flu by looking at Veterans Administration hospital records of flu and COVID-19 patients that had been stripped of identifying information. In the year and a half after patients became sick with the flu, some suffered elevated risk of continued breathing and lung problems. (Fentem, 2/9)

Health officials announced this week that a resident of Deschutes County — a rural part of Oregon — was diagnosed with plague, marking the state's first human case in more than eight years. The person was likely infected by their pet cat, who had developed symptoms, according to Deschutes County Health Services.Humans are most commonly exposed to plague from the bites of fleas carrying Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the disease. (Bendix, 2/9)

In recent years, the potential danger fungal infections pose to human health has become more and more apparent, as fungi either evolve to evade treatments or spread beyond their typical geographical regions. Doctors around the world are desperate for new medicines to combat the growing threat. “The problem with fungal diseases has gotten to the point where the World Health Organization has recognized it as a widespread threat,” said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist and chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. (Sullivan, 2/11)

For reasons that almost certainly have to do with global travel and poor pest management, bedbugs have resurfaced with a vengeance in 50 countries since the late 1990s. But recently, the resurgence has brought an added twist: When exterminators swarm out to hunt these pests, they might encounter not just one but two different kinds of bugs. (Eberle, 2/10)

Oregon is at the forefront of the push for more scrutiny; it already has some of the strongest health care market oversight laws in the nation. But state legislatures in Illinois, Minnesota, and New York approved similar oversight programs last year, meaning deals in those states will start getting more scrutiny soon. And five more states, Vermont, Washington, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and New Mexico, are already looking at legislation to start or expand their own programs. It doesn’t necessarily mean the deals won’t happen, experts cautioned. In Oregon, for example, where Optum is trying to buy the 100-provider Corvallis Clinic, the oversight has mostly served as a way for the public to raise concerns, and for the state to get more insight into the group’s activities. But it gives states and the public new and valuable insight into their health care landscape, experts told STAT. (Trang, 2/12)

Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission is eager to make Big Physician a lot smaller. Last September, the FTC sued private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe and U.S. Anesthesia Partners, alleging the two parties conspired to create monopolies for anesthesia services. Both Welsh Carson and USAP have tried to get the case thrown out, but the FTC recently doubled down. (Herman, 2/12)

The University of Minnesota is pursuing a plan to reacquire its Twin Cities campus health care facilities from Fairview Health Services. The University of Minnesota Regents on Friday voted to support a nonbinding letter of intent with Fairview to regain ownership of the U’s teaching hospital by the end of 2027. (2/9)

Corporate office space is the latest expense on the chopping block at Amazon's One Medical, which announced layoffs earlier this week. One Medical will close offices in New York City, Minneapolis and St. Petersburg, Florida, by the end of the month, according to a Thursday report from Business Insider which cited a leaked internal email from One Medical’s CEO Trent Green. The primary care provider is also downsizing its San Francisco office to one floor, the report said. (Hudson, 2/9)

A junior faculty member at MD Anderson Cancer Center has accused a high-profile scientist of improperly taking credit for research and making false, defamatory statements that damaged her career, according to a lawsuit filed in Harris County. The suit, filed in August and first reported Thursday by STAT News, represents an unusual public clash at one of the world’s leading cancer research hubs. (Gill and MacDonald, 2/9)

Chatbot vendors see growing demand for automation in clinician recruitment as health systems begin to use AI more broadly for both administrative and patient-facing tasks. Potential employees often work long, odd hours as clinicians, and that can pose challenges for health systems looking to recruit more staff. Chatbots—automated computer programs that simulate conversation—allow hospitals to reach out to job candidates and conveniently answer questions, which can streamline the hiring process and expand applicant pools. (Devereaux, 2/9)

There was a time when an allegation of data mishandling, scientific misconduct, or just a technical error felt like a crisis to Barrett Rollins, an oncologist and research integrity officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Now, it’s a Tuesday. (Chen and Wosen, 2/12)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: GoFundMe Has Become A Health Care Utility 

GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to platform for patients trying to escape medical billing nightmares. One study found that, in 2020, the annual number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes — about 200,000 — was 25 times the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 current campaigns are dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, who have spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, has a price tag of about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment. (Rosenthal, 2/12)

Aurobindo, which is one of the largest generic drug makers, has halted some production at a key facility in India after U.S. inspectors found manufacturing problems, the latest such episode to underscore concerns over both shortages and the quality of medicines produced by some suppliers. (Silverman, 2/9)

The insatiable demand for weight loss drugs is trouncing supply, leaving many patients struggling to find the injectable treatments. The dominant weight loss drugmakers, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, have said supply woes likely won’t go away anytime soon, as the popularity of those medicines continues to soar. But both companies are showing encouraging progress in their efforts to increase supply. (Constantino, 2/10)

Novo Nordisk said Friday it settled two lawsuits against two businesses claiming to offer compounded versions of its blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. The drugmaker has filed a total of 12 lawsuits against clinics, med spas and compounding pharmacies in the U.S. that claim to offer semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo Nordisk holds the patent on semaglutide, and the drugmaker does not supply the ingredient to outside groups, leaving some experts wondering what exactly is being sold to consumers. (Lovelace Jr., 2/9)

Efforts in Congress to restrict U.S. market access for Chinese biotech companies and investors face a central dilemma: They could disrupt key relationships and supply chains U.S. life sciences companies rely on. (Snyder, 2/12)

Pfizer has touched down at the Super Bowl. The Big Pharma ran its “Here’s to Science” ad at the event, framing its work to “outdo cancer” as part of a history of breakthroughs dating back to Hippocrates. In the 60-second ad, which also comes in an extended 90-second cut, Pfizer shows paintings, statues and photos of people such as Isaac Newton, its founders Charles Erhart and Charles Pfizer, Galileo and Albert Einstein singing along to Queen’s Don't Stop Me Now. Pfizer’s chief marketing officer Drew Panayiotou discussed the decision to show the ad at the Super Bowl in an accompanying behind the scenes video. (Pfizer, 2/12)

Southeastern Pennsylvania will get its first micro-hospitals — facilities with small emergency departments and 10 inpatient beds for people who are not seriously ill — as ChristianaCare and Lehigh Valley Health Network seize upon an efficient option for expanding into the Philadelphia market. Also called neighborhood hospitals, the model is designed to fill coverage gaps in areas that can’t support a full-scale hospital, while allowing health systems to expand their reach into more distant communities. (Brubaker, 2/12)

With supporters pointing to a need to ensure health care access in rural areas, House and Senate committees Thursday moved forward with bills that would create a new category of “rural emergency hospitals” in the state. The House Health & Human Services Committee approved the House version of the bill (HB 309), sponsored by Rep. Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, with the measure now positioned to go to the full House. (Andrews, 2/9)

Savannah McNally was 24 years old, and in the middle of a divorce, trying to sell her house, wrapping up her service in the Navy and figuring out a way to finish college. She was also pregnant. (Luthra, 2/9)

By the time she was 23, Madison Campbell had racked up more than a dozen cease-and-desist letters and was seated at a deposition table, staring down lawyers who argued she was endangering the same vulnerable people she claimed to be helping. In the five years since, the Bridgeville, Penn., native has won accolades for helping sexual assault survivors, first in Forbes magazine, and most recently when she was crowned Miss Pittsburgh in the 2023 pageant — a month before moving her DIY rape assessment startup from Brooklyn to her hometown. One thing hasn’t changed since she first started promoting Me Too Kits in 2019: Her product hasn’t actually been used in court. (Robinson-Johnson, 2/9)

A woman wielding a long gun is dead and the child who accompanied her is in critical condition after she walked into a famous Texas evangelical megachurch on Sunday afternoon in Houston and opened fire. Off-duty law enforcement officers confronted the woman shortly after she entered the massive Lakewood Church building just before 2 p.m., when the church was changing between English and Spanish-speaking services, according to Houston Police Chief Troy Finner. (Hernandez and Boorstein, 2/11)

A Brooklyn woman who pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with various pandemic-era relief schemes was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation and $650,000 in penalties. Prosecutors said Chanette Lewis, 32, carried out some of the schemes by leveraging her job at a call center, part of a New York program meant to provide health care workers with isolation rooms in hotels. They said she provided free hotel rooms to people she knew weren’t eligible health care workers or COVID-19 patients, including herself. (2/8)

More than half of mental health appointments — 55 percent — are being conducted remotely, mainly via videoconferencing rather than in-person visits, according to a brief research report in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Telemedicine, also known as telehealth, enables patients to obtain care via technology, most often a cellphone, video chat, computer or tablet. (Searing, 2/12)

Harvard public health researchers recruited social media influencers who discuss mental health issues, and trained them to present better information to audiences. (Muraskin, 2/12)

Derry Oliver was in fifth grade when she first talked to her mom about seeing a therapist. She was living in Georgia with her uncle and grandparents while her mom was in New York scoping out jobs and apartments ahead of moving the family. It was a rough year apart. Oliver, now 17, was feeling depressed. A school staffer raised the idea of a therapist. Oliver’s mom, also named Derry Oliver, questioned the school’s assessment and didn’t give consent for therapy. “You’re so young,” the mom recalled thinking. “There’s nothing wrong with you. These are growing pains.” (Elsen-Rooney, 2/10)

John Clair, the police chief of a small Appalachian town in southwest Virginia, spends his days consumed by a growing problem: the frequency with which his officers are tapped to detain, transport and wait in hospitals with people in the throes of a mental health crisis. Officers from Clair’s 21-member Marion Police Department crisscross the state to deliver patients for court-ordered treatment, sometimes only to discover the hospital where they were sent has no available beds. Patients end up boarding in waiting rooms or emergency rooms, sometimes for days on end, while under the supervision of Clair’s officers. (Rankin, 2/12)

When Drew Dummit’s mental illness worsened in 2017, he was admitted to Mind Springs Health in Grand Junction, the largest behavioral health services provider on the Western Slope. Three days later, staff deemed him stable enough to go home. Soon after, Dummit’s hallucinations worsened, he attempted suicide twice and began assaulting his mother, Sandra Sharp, more severely and frequently. “If I could have afforded inpatient care at the time, he would have gone,” said Sharp, who lives in Denver. (Flowers, 2/9)

For decades, thousands of Californians struggling with mental health and addiction have languished on the street. Now, voters will decide whether a March 5 ballot measure is the solution to get them the care they desperately need. Proposition 1, the only statewide measure on the ballot, would raise almost $6.4 billion in bonds for more than 11,000 new treatment beds and homeless housing units. The two-part measure would also use money already in the mental health system to expand intensive care programs and build supportive housing, potentially leaving fewer funds for early intervention or other services. It would do both without raising taxes. (Varian, 2/11)

Johns Hopkins researchers say they’re getting closer to developing a blood test that would identify changes in the brain associated with psychiatric and neurological disorders — an advancement that could enable doctors to detect the early signs of mental health emergencies. (Roberts, 2/9)

The University of Michigan released a study on the effects of ketamine in cases of severe or treatment-resistant depression among veterans. Half of the study participants experienced significant relief after undergoing six weeks of ketamine therapy, according to a Michigan Medicine press release. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, looked into the data of 215 veterans receiving intravenous ketamine therapy at Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. (Stabile, 2/10)

Blistering heat waves and more frequent wildfires are reversing a generation of U.S. clean air gains, a new study has found. The peer-reviewed research by the climate analytics firm First Street Foundation projected that by midcentury, the increased levels of microscopic soot particles and ozone molecules entering Americans’ lungs will be back to the levels they were at in 2004 — before a decades-long federal campaign to clean up the air. ... Falling air quality has driven up the number of days when children in the U.S. West can’t safely play outside nearly fivefold since 2000. (Elbein, 2/12)

Consumer Reports says it found plastic chemicals in every food product it tested at very high levels, including products sold by General Mills. "Consumers should be very concerned, but they shouldn't panic," said Brian Ronholm, Consumer Reports' Director of Food Policy. After testing dozens of supermarket products, Consumer Reports found plastic chemicals - known as phthalates in nearly all of them. (Henry, 2/9)

There's a controversy simmering today about one of the ways doctors declare people to be dead. The debate is focused on the Uniform Determination of Death Act, a law that was adopted by most states in the 1980s. The law says that death can be declared if someone has experienced "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain." But some parts of the brain can continue to function in people who have been declared brain dead, prompting calls to revise the statute. (Stein, 2/11)

Stacy Hernandez always had irregular periods. But when the bleeding wouldn’t stop, she got scared. She said she visited her general practitioner and urgent care at least six times. Doctors changed her birth-control medications, blamed her excess weight and suggested the bleeding would eventually subside. It didn’t. After more than a year, a doctor ordered an ultrasound followed by a test that finally identified the problem: uterine cancer. (Abbott, 2/12)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched the 2024 version of its federally funded national tobacco education campaign to help more people quit smoking — with a special aim at menthol cigarettes. "The CDC’s Tips campaign is designed to increase smoking cessation awareness and intervention in populations with high smoking rates and poorer health outcomes, including those living with mental illness," Dr. Lama Bazzi, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, told Fox News Digital. (Sudhakar, 2/11)

Despite the wide availability of a cheap, effective remedy for potentially fatal diarrheal disease, too few children receive the treatment, according to an analysis that suggests provider misconceptions may be driving the crisis. ... Oral rehydration salts (ORS), a solution of glucose and electrolytes that prevents dehydration, is the front-line treatment for diarrhea in kids and is on the WHO List of Essential Medicines. But the study, published in the journal Science, suggests that misconceptions among providers lead physicians to underprescribe the inexpensive cure. (Blakemore, 2/11)

As pickleball’s popularity has skyrocketed, so have the number of serious injuries among players. Bone fractures related to pickleball have increased 200% over the last 20 years, according to an analysis of a large government injury database presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons on Monday. (Carroll, 2/12)

MIRA, which stands for miniaturized in vivo robotic assistant, recently became the first surgical robot at the International Space Station. The tiny robot, which weighs about 2 pounds, arrived at the space station on Feb. 1. Over the next few weeks, the robotic assistant will practice operating in zero gravity. Developers plan to use MIRA to conduct a surgical simulation via remote-controlled technology, with a surgeon directing its movements 250 miles away from Nebraska. (Kim, 2/10)

The headlines are compelling, with phrases like, "The Obesity Revolution," and "A new 'miracle' weight-loss drug really works." The before-and-after pictures are inspiring. People who have struggled for decades to shed pounds are finally finding an effective strategy. (Lisa Doggett, 2/12)

Roughly every month I receive an e-mail from a parent somewhere in the world asking for help with a child who is violent, angry or aggressive. Some people describe being physically beaten or having their life threatened by their son or daughter. These families may spend thousands of dollars on special schools and treatments. Often they are desperate, afraid and looking for guidance. (Abigail Marsh, 2/9)

The January jobs report from the Labor Department, released earlier this month, created a certain amount of breathlessness on the part of those paid to watch employment trends. The takeaway: Hiring is hot. That’s certainly true in healthcare, where employment increased by 70,000 jobs in January. (Mary Ellen Podmolik, 2/12)

While staffing crises at hospitals continue to make headlines, dental care — too often overlooked and treated as separate from medical — is also experiencing a significant workforce challenge. (Steve Pollock, 2/12)

The president has never strongly supported abortion access personally, and it shows. (Susan Rinkunas, 2/9)

As a forward-thinking person facing a chronic or terminal illness, you may believe you've made your end-of-life wishes known. Let's say you've fully discussed your preferences with your health care professional and had them complete a POLST (Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) that clearly states your preferences on measures that could be used to keep you alive should your heart or breathing stop. (2/9)

The surgeon general's 2023 advisory on the epidemic of loneliness compared the health consequences to those of smoking cigarettes. A lack of positive social connection puts individuals at 29 percent higher risk of heart disease, 32 percent higher risk of stroke, and 50 percent increased risk of dementia. Lack of good social connections increase the risk of premature death by an astounding 60 percent, the advisory stated. Social support can even help people maintain a healthy body mass and control blood sugars. (Beth Frates, 2/9)

On Feb. 5, Buckingham Palace shared the news that King Charles had started treatment for cancer. Although the official statement did not include the particular type of cancer, it closed by noting that, “His Majesty has chosen to share his diagnosis to prevent speculation and in the hope it may assist public understanding for all those around the world who are affected by cancer.” (Christina S. Beck, 2/12)