- Rural Children Struggle to Access Hospital Services, Say Researchers
- Outlining the Intersection between Health Care and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People
- Biden-Harris Administration Announces Critical More Than $1.5 Billion State and Tribal Opioid Response Funding Opportunities
- RPHARM Program Fulfills Need for Rural Pharmacists
- Farmers Don't Do Mental Health
- A Pilot Program in Rural Vermont Hopes to Build a Blueprint for Substance Abuse Recovery
- Rural Telehealth Extension Reintroduced in Congress
- Students From Across the State Emphasized the Need for Mental Health Resources in Rural Alaska During a Conference
- The South Was the Center of Rural Population Growth Last Year
- How HHS SUD Confidentiality Regulations Will Impact Rural Providers
- VA Announces Expansion of "Close to Me" Cancer Program as Part of the Cancer Moonshot, Bringing Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Closer to Thousands of Veterans
- Navajo Psychiatrist Bridges Gaps Between Native American Culture and Behavioral Health Care
- Biden-Harris Administration Releases National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and First-Ever Federal Action Plan
- Biden Administration Sets Higher Staffing Mandates. Most Nursing Homes Don't Meet Them.
- Rural Communities Face Primary Care Physician Shortage
Pennsylvania Board of Osteopathic Medicine Increases Renewal Fees
On Aug. 15, the Pennsylvania Board of Osteopathic Medicine published its amended schedule of fees for biennial license renewals. The fee changes for osteopathic physicians, physician assistants and acupuncturists were effective on publication in the Pennsylvania Bulletin. The updated schedule increases all the Board’s biennial renewal fees to ensure revenue will meet the Board’s current and projected expenses. Please make note of these new fees as submission of incorrect licensure renewal fees will delay processing of submitted applications.
Mail Delivery Slowdowns a Challenge to Mail Order Prescriptions
The U.S. Postal Service has become a critical backbone of the country’s medication infrastructure, meaning slowdowns in mail delivery could have serious consequences for the millions of Americans who get prescription drugs through the mail. Treatments for cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other complex diseases increasingly are sent in the mail. And the coronavirus pandemic has spurred more people to get their routine prescriptions mailed to their homes as a safer alternative to visiting a pharmacy. Americans received 313 million adjusted prescriptions through the mail in 2019, often for common, generic medications that treat things like high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Black Americans Most Skeptical of Potential COVID-19 Vaccines
Black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at nearly 2½ times the rate of white people nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project, and despite representing roughly 13 percent of the population, they’ve accounted for 22 percent of coronavirus deaths in cases in which race and ethnicity are known. And yet, in a sign of deep-seated and well-earned distrust in the U.S. medical establishment, surveys have shown consistently that Black Americans are less willing than other racial and ethnic groups to accept a coronavirus vaccine. Read more.
West Virginia Sues CVS, Walmart for Role in Opioid Epidemic
West Virginia’s attorney general filed lawsuits Tuesday against Walmart and CVS, alleging the companies helped create the state’s devastating opioid epidemic. The lawsuits claim that the companies should remediate what has become a public health and financial crisis. Read more.
Sliding Coinsurance for CMS/Medicare Care Management Services
While health centers are required to impose Medicare coinsurance for Medicare care management services, the coinsurance may be “slid” commensurate with the sliding fee discount program (SFDP) policy of the health center. Federal anti-kickback statutes and beneficiary inducement prohibitions include exceptions allowing health centers to discount coinsurance for patients who are eligible for the health center’s sliding fee discount program without violating Medicare rules. To assist health centers in compliance, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), a HRSA-funded National Training and Technical Assistance Partner (NTTAP), shares GUIDANCE Sliding Coinsurance for CMS/Medicare Care Management Services.
HHS: All Provider Relief Funds Must be Used by July 31, 2021
In an FAQ published on July 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that all funding received from the Provider Relief Fund must be fully expended by July 31, 2021. Any funds not fully expended by that date must be returned to HHS. The FAQ is under the heading “Terms and Conditions” on the FAQ website.
Public Charge Regulation Back in Effect with Exceptions
The public charge litigation roller coaster continues. On July 29, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a nationwide injunction blocking the federal government from implementing the public charge rule during the COVID Public Health Emergency. Then on Aug. 12, a Circuit Court judge narrowed the District court’s ruling, applying the injunction only in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The regulation’s status may continue to change as other cases work their way through the courts.
Judge Blocks Attempt to End Transgender Health Protections
A federal judge this week blocked an effort by the Trump administration to erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, dealing a blow to the broader legal reasoning it has used to try to roll back transgender rights across the government. Read more.
State Releases Health Disparity Report
In mid-April, Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Governor John Fetterman announced the creation of a COVID-19 Response Task Force for Health Disparity to help communicate issues about how the pandemic is affecting the state’s minority and marginalized populations. After months of weekly meetings and outreach from task force members to marginalized community members, the task force completed its report and presented it to the governor earlier this week. The report includes six recommendations focused on these policy topics related to health disparity, ranked in order of urgency: housing, criminal justice, food insecurity, health disparity, education and economic opportunities. According to the report, each area either directly or indirectly affects the health of Pennsylvanians and must be addressed to appropriately remove the disparities that have existed for generations and have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. The work of the task force will help inform an internal steering committee on dismantling racism that Gov. Wolf established recently. Read the Governor’s press release.
Pennsylvania Set to Launch Contact Tracing App
This week, the commonwealth announced plans to launch a coronavirus exposure-notification app in early Sept. to more quickly break chains of transmission by using the new technology to notify people who may have been exposed. The state has a $1.9 million contract, using federal grant dollars, to deploy and maintain the app with software developer NearForm Ltd, the Ireland-based company whose app there has been downloaded by more than one-fourth of that country’s residents. The app is based on smartphone technology developed by Apple and Google, and will undergo a pilot project next week using state government employees and public health students, staff and faculty. In Sept., you can find the COVID Alert PA app for free to download in the Google Play store or Apple App store. This app is voluntary, but the more Pennsylvanians age 18 and older who adopt the app, the more successful efforts can be. The app does not enable any location services and is designed to be completely anonymous.