Due to Covid-19, many companies moved to a hybrid work model, leading to their buildings being largely underutilized. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC), is taking advantage of its quieter workspace to fight food insecurity in its local communities.
Due to fewer employees working onsite, Blue Cross…
Editor’s note: This story is based on discussions at Abarca Forward, a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, hosted by Abarca Health, a pharmacy benefit manager. MedCity News’ Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Senior Reporter Katie Adams were invited to attend and speak at the conference. All travel and related expenses for…
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Editor’s note: This story is based on discussions at Abarca Forward, a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, hosted by Abarca, a pharmacy benefit manager. MedCity News’ Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Senior Reporter Katie Adams were invited to attend and speak at the conference. All travel and related expenses for the team were covered by Abarca. However, company officials had no input in editorial coverage.
The U.S. healthcare systems spent a whopping $301 billion on specialty drugs in 2021, a 43% increase since 2016. These specialty drugs accounted for half of the year’s total drug spending, and the list prices for specialty…
Geographic atrophy, an eye disorder that starts as a loss of central vision and progressively worsens to total blindness, now has its first treatment. The FDA on Friday approved an Apellis Pharmaceuticals drug that slows the progression of this disease, which affects more than 1 million people in the U.S.
Approval of the Apellis drug, pegcetacoplan, covers all patients with geographic atrophy, a broad label that reflects the representative patient population tested in pivotal studies, Chief Medical Officer Caroline Baumal said during a Friday evening conference call. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company plans to launch the drug in March, marketing the product under…
A Chiesi Farmaceutici drug for a rare enzyme deficiency is now approved by the FDA, making it the first U.S. treatment for a disorder that leads to a range of cognitive and muscle problems.
The regulatory decision announced late Thursday covers the treatment of children and adults who have alpha-mannosidosis (AM), a disease caused by a genetic mutation that leads to defective or inactive forms of an enzyme called alpha-D-mannosidase. Chiesi’s drug, velmanase alfa, is an engineered version of that enzyme. The privately held Italian company will market its new FDA-approved drug as Lamzede, the same name for the product in Europe,…
Surgical robotics is dominated by various versions of the da Vinci system from Intuitive Surgical, a competent but expensive tool that’s become a standard in modern advanced hospitals. It took Intuitive about 30 years to achieve this status, but there are systems from J&J, Medtronic, CMR Surgical, and others that are chipping away at the company’s dominance. All of these systems operate under the “master-slave” concept, which involves a surgeon sitting behind a console, away from the patient, who manipulates the mechanical arms of the robot via some kind of joystick-like device. Thanks to kind support from Biomed Israel, the leading…
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Amid swirling accusations that Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs) are overbilling the U.S. government and calls for better oversight, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in early February that it would investigate overbilling by those plans. They expect to recoup 4.7 billion dollars through this program.
This article focuses on the relatively young technologies that enable CMS to uncover overbillings, whether they be errors or fraud. The article is based on an interview with Kel Pults, chief clinical officer and vice president of MediQuant. A future article will explain how Medicare Advantage plans are trying to improving data collection and reporting,…
The current Adderall shortage is of serious concern to both patients who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and clinicians. This shortage cannot be quickly alleviated by a simple increase in the amount of medication manufactured, unless the upper limit to the amount of Adderall’s active ingredient that can be manufactured in a given year is raised by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The limit has been imposed because the active ingredient can be abused as a recreational drug. It is necessary to control the supply of any medication with abuse liability, but this must be achieved without compromising the legitimate…
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Editor’s note: This story is based on discussions at Abarca Forward, a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, hosted by Abarca, a pharmacy benefit manager. MedCity News’ Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Senior Reporter Katie Adams were invited to attend and speak at the conference. All travel and related expenses for the team were covered by Abarca. However, company officials had no input in editorial coverage.
In order for the U.S. healthcare system to operate smoothly, various stakeholders must cooperate with one another and share data seamlessly. But this notion is far from being achieved — the industry is still seriously plagued by…
Virtual behavioral health provider Talkspace unveiled a new product Thursday that provides employers with access to a library of mental health resources that they can share with employees.
New York City-based Talkspace serves employers, payers and consumers, and provides self-guided mental health programs, therapy and psychiatry. Its new product, Talkspace Engage, aims to help employers promote their mental health benefits to their employees, a challenge that many companies struggle with, said Erin Boyd, chief growth officer of enterprise at Talkspace. “One resounding common theme that we heard among [employers] was that, ‘I don’t know how to get people to use these benefits…
