The FDA has agreed to speed up review of donanemab, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is moving to limit reimbursement for drugs in this class to only patients in clinical trials.
It’s the latest twist in a long-running story involving Dr. Timothy Story, who worked for St. Vincent Medical Group for a decade, but was fired in August 2020 after St. Vincent learned of a federal investigation into his prescribing practices.
Most of Indiana’s hospitals have shelved elective surgeries—the medically necessary procedures that are normally scheduled at a patient’s convenience and often require an overnight stay, such as tonsillectomies, hernia repairs and hip replacements.
The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee voted 10-1 to approve the bill. It was supported by doctors and hospitals, and opposed by the health insurance industry and the business lobby.
The bill would force employers who require the COVID-19 vaccine to provide medical and religious exemptions (the latter with no questions asked) and offer a testing option at no cost to the employee.
Available at-home coronavirus tests might be less sensitive to the now-dominant omicron variant, especially early in an infection, leading to false negatives. But experts say better-performing tests are coming.
The Indiana State Medical Association wants a federal judge to allow it to turn over confidential records to the state licensing board regarding a surgeon suspected of working under the influence of cocaine and alcohol.
Marketing and advertising materials for medical services should clearly and prominently disclose the provider’s license type (physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, chiropractor, optometrist, dentist, podiatrist, etc.).
Not only do you have to rearrange plans to visit customers or attend conferences, but you suddenly need to isolate in a hotel room, find restaurants that deliver, and perhaps reschedule flight and hotel plans.
Indiana Hospital Association President Brian Tabor said hospitals around the state “have reached a state of crisis with dwindling capacity left to care for patients.”
With the highly transmissible omicron variant spurring record levels of infections and hospitalizations, experts have repeatedly urged the Biden administration to recommend the better-quality masks rather than cloth coverings to protect against an airborne virus.
The federal government has resumed shipping all three monoclonal antibody treatments—including one made by Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.—that are authorized for early-stage COVID-19 to states despite evidence that two might be ineffective against the omicron variant.
Central Indiana hospitals diverted ambulances for nearly 3,000 hours during a six-week period this fall, according to information IBJ received from the Indiana State Department of Health through an open-records request.
Easy-to-take antiviral pills, authorized just before Christmas, were hailed as a potential turning point in the fight against the coronavirus because of the medicines’ ability to keep high-risk people out of the hospital.
By Christmas, nearly 63% of adult Hoosiers had been vaccinated, with 36% of adults having received a booster shot. But among all Hoosiers eligible (including children 5 years and older), only about 52% of the state’s population over the age of 5 had been fully vaccinated, putting Indiana near the bottom among states.
The reduction in isolation time could allow Colts quarterback Carson Wentz to return for Sunday’s key game against Las Vegas after Indianapolis placed him on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation recommendations for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine.
