Hospitals Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

January 18, 2022

Medicare curbs Alzheimer’s drug coverage, fueling regulatory turmoil

As the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to head the federal Food and Drug Administration advances, he and the agency already are confronting a major regulatory crisis over Aduhelm, a prescription drug targeted for Alzheimer’s treatment and approved on the thinnest of evidence.

An FDA sister agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has joined the Department of Veterans Affairs in sharply restricting Aduhelm’s use and coverage for payment.

Quickly after the FDA approved the drug made by Biogen and the maker priced it at $56,000 annually for patients, the VA said it would consider Aduhelm for use in one of the nation’s largest health systems only on a case-by-case basis.

January 17, 2022

U.S. has hit blood crisis and donors needed urgently, Red Cross says

by Patrick A. Malone

It has no artificial replacement. Patients can require enormous amounts of it, suddenly and quickly, as well as on a sustained basis. But safe, abundant supplies of blood are desperately needed now, the Red Cross says, having declared what it says is its first-ever national crisis with the country facing its most dire shortages in a decade.

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted donations, which already were spare, says the nonprofit agency that collects 40% of the nation’s supply. In more regular times, just 3% of those who are eligible donate blood, and donations have fallen off a cliff since the pandemic started.

Demand, however, persists. As a selection of the agency’s reported statistics show:

January 16, 2022

Vaccine mandate upheld for health workers but not large companies

by Patrick A. Malone

What is good for geese is not for ganders, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided.

The justices ruled 5-4 that the Biden Administration may force health employers to require their staff to get vaccinated or lose important federal funds, but in a 6-3 vote they rejected a vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with more than 100 employees for their workers in close contact with others.

The high court majority, assailed by dissenting justices, sided with conservative Republican state officials’ legal challenges and ripped away an important, proven way to quell the worst public health crisis in a century — a pandemic that is slamming the U.S. health system and is on its way to killing at least 850,000 Americans and infecting more than 65 million of us in recent months.

January 11, 2022

Poor FDA communication harms patients, taxpayers, other agencies

by Patrick A. Malone

Critics are slamming the federal Food and Drug Administration for dropping the ball in informing the U.S. officials who run the Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ health programs about crucial regulatory decisions, leading the federal government apparently to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for patients to get a defective heart device and potentially to pay billions of dollars for a prescription medication targeted at Alzheimer’s but with questionable evidence of its effectiveness.

FDA officials insist that they acted in patients’ best interests when they posted on an agency website, along with thousands of other public communications, a warning letter issued to the maker of the HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device, or HVAD. That missive told the device maker HeartWare — and later its acquiring company Medtronic — that the FDA found serious problems with the HVAD tied to patient injuries and deaths.

The FDA eventually would amass “thousands of reports of suspicious deaths and injuries and more than a dozen high-risk safety alerts from the manufacturer,” ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative new site found. “One horrifying device failure after another” led HVAD’s maker to halt the manufacture of the supposed life-sustaining heart pump. The firm has agreed to a long-term plan to deal with the calamity of patients who now cannot have the defective device removed.

January 7, 2022

In latest pandemic surge, nursing home problems hit center stage, again

by Patrick A. Malone

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are playing a sad, familiar, and disturbing role in the U.S. health system’s teetering on the verge of collapse in too many parts of the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The owners and operators of the care facilities for the aged, sick, and injured insist they have done as well as they could have under unusual, calamitous conditions. But after taking in billions of dollars of emergency taxpayer assistance, they apparently have not moved with the needed alacrity to deal with their previous problems or to assist in positive ways with the crisis now slamming the health care system.

Just a reminder that the U.S. health system has its own “supply chain” nightmare. Hospitals offer intensive care, and their beds and other treatment spaces are among the system’s most costly, and, in the pandemic, in the highest demand.

January 4, 2022

D.C. area slammed hard as winter coronavirus surge blasts the U.S.

by Patrick A. Malone

The coronavirus pandemic is tearing up the country with the Omicron variant shattering infection records and rates and this viral strain and the Delta variant overwhelming hospitals and threatening to break the already exhausted U.S. health care system.

Uncertainty has returned to conversations about the pandemic’s course, as educators decide whether to return students at least temporarily to online learning, travel has been disrupted, and businesses make tough health safety decisions.

Patients and experts alike are pondering basic questions in dealing with the disease and its risks. These include whether deaths, a lagging indicator, will spike with Omicron as they did with the Delta surge, and are current responses — such as cloth or “surgical” face coverings, isolation, quarantine, and rapid testing — as effective with highly contagious Omicron?

January 3, 2022

Good news in ’22: Patients mostly see end to ‘surprise’ medical bills

by Patrick A. Malone

Here’s a bit of good news that may make patients jump for joy to start off 2022: Surprise medical bills mostly are supposed to end, effective Jan. 1.

Consumers still must watch out for potential big hits on their emergency transportation costs and they will need to ensure scheduled services with medical providers occur “in network.”

Just a reminder that Congress surprised its critics at the close of 2020 by passing in bipartisan fashion a ban of a practice that patients complained was one of the worst financial menaces in their medical care: surprise bills.

December 28, 2021

Senator from small, poor state roils big plan to improve U.S. health

by Patrick A. Malone

Record numbers of poor, working poor, and middle-class Americans are signing up to receive federal help to get affordable insurance to safeguard their health and finances. But will congressional politicking cost them this invaluable coverage — just before the nation goes to the polls for midterm elections?

For months now, President Biden and the Democrats have labored to put together a multitrillion-dollar legislative package dealing with the nation’s health needs, climate change, and more. Because Capitol Hill is so riven — among Democrats, as well as between Republicans and Democrats — the ambitious aspirations of those in the party barely in power have needed to be wrapped into a sprawling measure that can sidestep the filibuster and survive a complex legislative maneuver and on to passage.

Let’s be clear that 50 Republicans in the Senate and hundreds of GOP House members have refused to act in any way like American lawmakers, declining at all to work on the package and to sticking to partisan position that Democrats will need by themselves to pass measures needed and popular with voters.

December 26, 2021

Omicron tears across country, as Delta rips unvaccinated skeptics

by Patrick A. Malone

The Omicron variant swiftly has become the nation’s dominant strain, with coronavirus infections skyrocketing from coast to coast.

Officials are anxiously awaiting data to gauge the severity of Omicron infections and if the sharp rise in cases involving this variant will mean overwhelming numbers of patients requiring care in hospitals, too many of which already have been swamped, treating those infected with the deadly Delta variant.

December 13, 2021

Pandemic toll nears 800,000, as Delta rages and Omicron threatens

by Patrick A. Malone

The coronavirus pandemic is nearing another grim mark: 800,000 deaths in this country in its two-year run, with 1 in 100 of the fatalities occurring among those 65 and older.

The pandemic toll exceeds the population of cities like Washington, D.C., Seattle, Denver, Boston, and Memphis, and is heading toward the equivalent of spots like Charlotte and Fort Worth. The virus for some time now has proven to be deadlier than the military casualties the country experienced combined in World War II plus the Vietnam and Korean wars.

Still, millions of shoppers are cramming into stores and malls seeking seasonal bargains and gift-giving wonders. Tens of millions of travelers are ready to jump into cars, trains, buses, and planes for holiday and year-end journeys, to gather with friends and family.