News

Prenatal cannabis exposure after five to six weeks of pregnancy is associated with attention, social and behavioral problems that persist into early adolescence, according to a study reported yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics. Supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the study is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults to understand the factors that influence brain, cognitive and social-emotional development.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services yesterday approved for Oregon the first Medicaid state plan amendment to cover community-based mobile crisis intervention services, an option made available to states under the American Rescue Plan Act. Mobile crisis intervention services provide individuals experiencing a mental health and/or substance use crisis 24/7 access to a behavioral health specialist who can screen, assess, stabilize and refer them to health care, social and other services as needed.

The Los Angeles Department of Public Health, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yesterday confirmed the first death due to monkeypox in a Los Angeles County resident who was severely immunocompromised and had been hospitalized.

Commenting today on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ proposed calendar year 2023 payment rule for hospital outpatients and ambulatory surgical centers, AHA said it supports the agency’s decision to end its unlawful cuts to 340B hospitals and urged the agency to promptly restore 340B hospital payments for CYs 2018-2022 without penalizing other hospitals. AHA also voiced support for the agency’s proposal to use Medicare claims data to calculate the monthly facility rate for Rural Emergency Hospitals, and urged the agency to detail the payment methodology and monitor its adequacy going forward.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, which serves as the nation’s transplant system under contract with the federal government, Friday reported its millionth U.S. organ transplant. UNOS and the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance credited the organ donation and transplantation community, including transplant hospitals, with making the historic milestone possible. The first successful transplant took place at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital) in Boston in 1954.

Insured and uninsured Americans can receive the new bivalent Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 booster and other COVID-19 vaccines at no cost as long as the federal government continues to purchase and distribute them, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month recommended Pfizer’s updated COVID-19 vaccine booster for Americans aged 12 and older and Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine booster for Americans aged 18 and older at least two months after completing a primary COVID-19 vaccine series or booster.

Health care providers who received Provider Relief Fund payments exceeding $10,000 total between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2021, must report to the Health Resources and Services Administration by Sept. 30 on how they used those funds or face enforcement actions such as repayment or exclusion from receiving or retaining future PRF payments. The deadline to use these period 3 funds was June 30, 2022.

The FBI today released recommendations to help protect medical devices from cyberattacks that can threaten health care operations, patient safety, and data privacy and integrity, citing a growing number of unpatched medical device vulnerabilities.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — a time for mental health advocates, community organizations, health care organizations and others to highlight resources and raise awareness of this stigmatized, and often taboo, topic.

In this first podcast in a new AHA Advancing Health series, #JustLead, Shana Dacon-Pereira, senior director for the office of diversity and inclusion at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, shares how her organization works to advance equity of care and spread lessons learned, an initiative that earned AHA’s 2022 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award.