News

AHA’s The Value Initiative is providing new resources to support hospitals’ and health systems’ efforts to establish and improve age-friendly care. The Creating Value with Age-Friendly Health Systems issue brief provides best practices for implementing the 4Ms Framework — What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility — and strategies to measure age-friendly progress and enable value.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the Community Health Access and Rural Transformation Model, a new payment model for rural communities in response to an Aug. 3 executive order calling for a new model “to ensure that rural healthcare providers are able to provide the necessary level and quality of care.”

Houston’s Kindred Healthcare and TIRR Memorial Hermann are among the many post-acute care providers that have incurred increased costs to prepare for and treat COVID-19-positive patients and complex post-COVID-19 patients.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of George Washington University Public Health Laboratory’s GWU SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Test.

Researchers have launched two clinical trials to test whether monoclonal (laboratory-made) antibodies can safely prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or symptoms in healthy adults, the National Institutes of Health announced.

More than 380,000 U.S. children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, which represents 9.1% of cases in states reporting age, according to an analysis released by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association.

The American Medical Association released new Current Procedural Terminology codes for reporting SARS-CoV-2 laboratory testing on medical claims.

The Department of Health and Human Services continues to update its CARES Act FAQ to aid hospitals and health systems in understanding the nuances of the provider relief fund.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the extension of its Appropriate Use Criteria testing period through 2021.

Health and Human Services posted COVID-19 testing plans for state, local and territorial jurisdictions through the rest of calendar year 2020.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first liquid biopsy companion diagnostic that uses next-generation sequencing technology to identify patients with specific gene mutations in a deadly form of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

The AHA urged the Internal Revenue Services to remove the treatment of health care sharing ministries from a proposed rule issued by the agency in June.

The Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for a SARS-CoV-2 antibody test made by Autobio Diagnostics Co. due to concerns with the accuracy of the test when evaluated at the National Institutes of Health’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.

President Trump authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use up to $44 billion in Stafford Act disaster relief funds to supplement individuals’ wages resulting from lost work due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.

The Health Resources and Services Administration expects in mid-August to distribute half of the $5 billion in Provider Relief Funds announced last month to enhance COVID-19 response at Medicare-certified long-term care facilities, the agency said Friday.

In an op-ed published in Fierce Healthcare, Robyn Begley, AHA’s chief nursing officer and CEO of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership, urged Americans to take steps to defeat COVID-19 by adopting the mindset employed in every hospital and health system nationwide.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals remain cornerstones of their communities, as they’ve always been. They continue to serve and heal, provide jobs, food, social services and education around sound health practices. 

The health care field added 125,500 jobs in July, increasing nearly 1% to a seasonally adjusted 15.7 million, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

The Health Resources and Services Administration awarded 89 organizations, including hospitals, $1 million each to combat opioid and other substance use disorders in high-risk rural communities. The recipients will work with the communities to implement and tailor evidence-based or promising practice models to their needs.

Researchers have developed an expanded system for classifying serious maternal complications during hospitalization for childbirth, which can be used to compare severe maternal morbidity rates across hospitals and other patient populations, according to a study reported in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.