Page 198 - Mployee Wellness Programs News Today

For patients that are uninsured or not using their insurance and choosing to pay out of pocket, providers are required to give a patient an estimate of all reasonably expected costs ahead of time, referred to as the Good Faith Estimate (GFE).

Health plans today must consider what they want out of their pharmacy benefits and how to achieve something better for their members. And when they look at new platforms and processes that provide greater transparency, improved member experience, and simplicity in establishing and maintaining the technology, they’re likely to find that they don’t have to do things the way they always have.

Johnson & Johnson is stopping clinical development of an experimental HIV vaccine after the four-shot regimen did not beat a placebo in a late-stage study. The clinical trial failure comes follows the 2021 failure of the vaccine candidate in a different study population.

The Evernorth report also found that there is a higher prevalence of flu medication prescriptions among children and people living the South. Employers and payers have a responsibility to encourage people to get vaccinated, said Urvashi Patel, vice president of the Evernorth Research Institute.

Sun Pharmaceuticals is acquiring Concert Pharmaceuticals, a biotech whose lead program has positive data from two late-stage clinical trials in alopecia areata. The deal gives Sun Pharma a drug candidate that could match up against hair loss drugs from two big pharmaceutical companies.

Women have been dismissed and neglected for centuries: any investment and innovation in this space can make an outsized impact: keeping women and their families healthy, aiding research and development, and eliminating the gender bias against women and their healthcare that has persisted since Ancient Greece.

The 41st annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference concluded last week. After the pandemic prompted it to go virtual, it was back in person, smaller in size and more effective. Here are my takeaways.

MemorialCare, Ballad Health, Cedars-Sinai and UNC REX Healthcare recently participated in Censinet’s $9 million funding round. The company’s flagship product is a cloud-based network that allows healthcare organizations to share and manage risk data to strengthen cybersecurity planning.

The uninsured rate declined to 10.5% in 2021 from 11.1% in 2019, according to a recent report from HHS. Some of the largest gains in coverage were among demographic groups that historically have had higher uninsured rates, such as younger adults, Latino individuals, American Indian/Alaska Natives and non-English speaking adults.

Cell therapy offers a treatment option for some advanced blood cancers, but the manufacturing process is lengthy and complex. The biopharmaceutical industry is working on various technologies that could make manufacturing faster and more efficient, or perhaps supplant the current process altogether.