News

The Health Resources and Services Administration will provide nearly $1 billion to small rural hospitals, critical access hospitals and rural health clinics to expand COVID-19 testing and help mitigate the virus in their communities, the Department of Health and Human Services announced.

AHA voiced support for the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act (H.R. 2255/S. 1024), bipartisan legislation that would expedite the visa authorization process for qualified international nurses to support hospitals facing staffing shortages. 

The Government Accountability Office named five new members to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, which advises Congress on issues affecting Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. 

With the country in the grips of an opioid epidemic, Norton Healthcare in 2015 launched the Maternal Opiate and Substance Treatment program, which makes it easy and non-stigmatizing for pregnant women with substance use disorder to access addiction treatment during obstetrical care, dramatically reducing admissions for neonatal abstinence syndrome.

As part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Week of Action May 3-7, the Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the AHA and other national organizations to inform this population through social media about the special enrollment period available through Aug. 15 at the federally-facilitated health insurance marketplace.

On this AHA Advancing Health podcast, Akin Demehin and Caitlin Gillooley, who lead AHA’s work on policy regarding quality measurement, and Anthony Weiss, M.D., senior vice president and chief medical officer of Beth Israel-Deaconness Medical Center in Boston, Mass., discuss the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ updates to the hospital star ratings methodology, including what changed, what didn’t and what still needs to.

Eleven organizations representing physicians and hospitals, including the AHA, urged Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to reconsider certain quality reporting changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized in the 2021 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. 

The COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black Americans, Native American tribes and tribal populations, Latino Americans and other communities of color is generating a renewed focus on advancing health equity.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health today revoked its public health certificate of approval for Plastikon Industries’ PLASMA N95-01 filtering facepiece respirator for failure to meet filter efficiency requirements in a product audit.

Pfizer Inc. said during its quarterly earnings call that it will file by the end of May for full Food and Drug Administration approval for its COVID-19 vaccine. More than 131 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered in the U.S. since it was authorized for emergency use in December.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined the global public health community in marking the end of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North Kivu Province, 42 days after the last survivor tested negative for the virus.

The Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for Battelle Memorial Institute’s decontamination system for N95 respirators at Battelle's request.

Members of the House and Senate Telehealth Caucus introduced the CONNECT for Health Act (S.1512/H.R. 2903), AHA-supported legislation that would permanently remove all geographic restrictions on Medicare telehealth services and expand originating sites to include home and other sites.

The AHA urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to apply its recently increased Medicare payment rates for COVID-19 vaccine administration services retroactively.

The Health Resources and Services Administration will pay health care providers who administer authorized COVID-19 vaccines to patients in health plans that do not cover vaccine administration or cover it with patient cost-sharing, the Department of Health and Human Services announced.

The factors that influence health are present in all aspects of our lives — in our own homes, in our communities and in society as a whole. In theory, this gives each of us the opportunity to improve and maintain our health, with support from hospitals and other providers, community-based organizations, businesses and government agencies. 

The Food and Drug Administration approved a naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray to treat opioid overdoses that delivers 8 milligrams of naloxone, up from 2 mg or 4 mg in previously approved products. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a rule finalizing changes to the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model, which bundles payment to acute care hospitals for hip and knee replacement surgery.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a second final notice of benefit and payment parameters to implement standards governing health insurance issuers and marketplaces for 2022 that were not finalized in the Jan. 19 final rule.

The National Institutes of Health awarded $29 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to support and expand its Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities, which conducts community-engaged research and outreach to strengthen COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access, testing and treatment in communities of color.