Georgia hospitals hit with Medicare penalties

70 of Georgia’s 147 hospitals are among the 2,600 nationwide that will be punished by Medicare in 2023 for high readmission rates. Four of them will have payments cut by more than a full percent: Wayne Memorial (Jesup), Coliseum Medical Centers (Macon), Southeast Georgia Health System (Brunswick), and Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside (Columbus).

21 hospitals in the state will also be penalized 1% per patient for high rates of hospital-acquired conditions. Only Southeast Georgia Health System — Brunswick was on both lists.

Worth noting: For 2023, CMS changed its calculations so it doesn’t penalize safety-net hospitals when poorer patients can’t afford medical care after leaving and end up readmitted.

Who can you bring to your region meeting?

First off, if you haven’t registered for your fall region meeting, c’mon and do it! All the info is at GPhA.org/regionmeetings.

What about bringing a plus-one or -two? We’re cool with that, with two notes.

1. Please register your guests prior to attending the event. That’s so we know how many comfy chairs to have ready.
2. Those guests need to be pharmacy healthcare providers — pharmacists, pharmacy techs, student pharmacists, and even academicians, provided they never use the word “academician.”

Flu continues

The latest figures, courtesy of the Walgreens Flu index, show that “to date overall flu activity is more than 10 times higher nationwide when compared to the 2021-2022 flu season, and has more than doubled over the past two weeks.”

Let’s be careful out there.

More shortages coming

Supply chain problems are spreading, and an FDA warning suggests there are more to come.

The agency flagged shortages of more than a dozen drug ingredients, two of which are included in Adderall. Others include bacteriostatic saline, which is necessary for diluting drugs for IV injections, and compounds used in common drugs for anesthesia, water retention and calcium deficiencies.

What’s the problem? China. That’s where most active ingredients come from, whether they’re used here or in India (where a lot of our generics come from). As one supply chain expert put it, “We don’t have independence in our drug supply at all.”

But shortages aren’t bad for everyone. Areva Pharmaceuticals jacked up the price of an older chemotherapy drug, fludarabine, from $110 to $2,736 because it’s hard to find — and cancer patients need it.

Another (potential) apnea drug

If you have mice with sleep apnea, you know how those little snores can keep the whole house up at night^*. Even XXS-size CPAP masks don’t fit them. Good news, though: There might be (another) pharmaceutical option coming down the pike. (We already wrote about one.)

It’s like this, see: A protein called TRPM7 is found in the sensors in the neck that detect oxygen and carbon dioxide changes. TRPM7 has already been connected to high blood pressure, and now Johns Hopkins researchers say that “TRPM7 plays a role in suppressing breathing in obese mice with symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing conditions.”

In other words, TRPM7 might be a target for treating sleep apnea.

They took some fat mice, blocked TRPM7 from being produced, and found that these obese mice had a 14% increase in the amount of air they breathed compared to normal obese mice. Well well well.

They also found that the hormone leptin may cause more TRPM7 to be produced, meaning there are now a couple of pathways to explore for treating apnea with drugs.

* Assuming you have a lot of mice and a small house

An RSV vaccine is almost here

Fun fact: The same team that discovered the structure of SARS-CoV-2 (allowing Covid vaccines to be made), had previously published the structure of RSV. And now that’s about to bear fruit as “four [vaccine] candidates and one monoclonal antibody treatment are in late-stage clinical trials.”

RSV hits little kids and seniors particularly hard, and almost 60 years ago a completely different kind of prototype vaccine failed in trials — but as that has nothing to do with these current vaccines, no one would ever think of bringing that up as a way to scare parents.

The best blood thinner

If you’ve been lying awake at night wondering “What’s the best direct oral anticoagulant?” you can wonder no more. Researchers at University College London have the answer: It’s apixaban.

Using data from more than half a million patients on DOACs, they compared the effectiveness of apixaban, dabigatran, edoxaban, and rivaroxaban users. Result: While all four worked fine for preventing stroke and brain bleeds, “apixaban stood out as having lower risk of gastrointestinal bleeding, with 19–28% lower risks when compared directly to each of the other three DOACs.”

Sleep well.

Aim high

What’s the number one reason men go to the doctor? Let’s just say it’s not “I have the sniffles*.”

* Unless that’s a euphemism I’m not familiar with