Learning the limits of cyberattack insurance

One thing a lot of providers are learning after the UnitedHealth attack is that they need to think more about their cyberattack insurance.

This sounds like I’m going to try to sell you something. I’m not.

The gist is that their insurance might cover if something happens to them, but not if it happens to, say, their payment provider. So when patients sue, their insurance company will say, “We’re not paying because we don’t cover United Health. We cover XYZ Pharmacy.”

(Here’s an analogy: Imagine your brakes are defective and you get into an accident, but your insurance company says it won’t pay because it covers you, not the company that made your defective brakes. It’s your problem to deal with BrakeCo — but meanwhile the guy you hit wants payment.)

Thus even companies with cyberattack insurance are finding the limitations of those policies, while they’ve got patients demanding recourse. Eventually UnitedHealth will probably make everyone good, but that may be too late for a lot of small practices.

Convention CPE course list released

It’s out! The CPE courses list for the 2024 Georgia Pharmacy Convention! That means instead of saying, “We have tons of CPE,” now we can say, “Check out the list of CPE courses you can take!”

That full course list for the convention is right here, and more importantly the registration link is here:

Remember: Early-bird registration for the convention ends March 31, so there’s not much time left to get the best rate. Go forth and register now!

A pharma AI to cut readmission

Medication errors are too often the cause of hospital readmissions — the transfer of patient data from inside pharmacist to outside pharmacist isn’t always smooth, especially when there are multiple specialist prescribers involved.

A transition-of-care pharmacist can cut down medication errors, but that’s a lot of hours (30 to 50 minutes per discharge, multiplied by dozens of patients). Humans are slow. That’s why West Virginia University pharmacy researchers are developing an AI tool to take their place help reduce their workload.

The AI will do more than review a list of meds for potential interaction. It’ll be able to read clinician notes and medical history as well. “[I]n each patient’s profile, the tool will also be able to determine the risk of readmission and create an alert system for pharmacists.”

The latest legislative update

As the 2024 legislative session winds down, we had some good news and some bad news in a very busy week. Check out Melissa Reybold’s latest Legislative Update for the details.

Short takes

Eli Lilly says its 10 mL vials of Humalog and Lispro injections are both in temporary shortage — meaning through the beginning of April. “Patients who need insulin immediately and cannot access their healthcare provider for an alternative treatment option should seek emergency care.”

THIS drug I’ll stick with

Adherence is a problem with any drug that needs to be taken for the long-term, but there seems to be one exception: the new obesity drugs. The limited amount of anecdotal reports so far indicate that “Patients seem to take them faithfully, week in and week out.” (Side note: A lot of patients didn’t start using them once they learned they had take them forever.)

Slimy goodness?

If you’ve ever caught or eaten catfish, you’ve undoubtedly asked yourself, “What can be done with all this lovely mucus?” Scientists at UC Davis decided to find out. Turns out there’s “a compound with powerful antibacterial properties” in there. It’s even safe (in general) for mammalian cells, but whether it could lead to a drug for humans is another question entirely.

Better buses, better students

Kids who ride in newer school buses do better academically than the ones stuck in the older ones. What makes this study out of the University of Michigan interesting is that the buses were replaced randomly — i.e., it’s not as if kids in affluent districts did better. It was all about the bus.

[A]mong districts randomly selected by the EPA to receive funding to replace the oldest, dirtiest, buses (pre-1990) with newer, cleaner buses, educational performance improved after the new buses were in use. Replacing newer buses, however, did not show the same benefits.

So how did cleaner buses mean better test scores? Kids who rode cleaner buses were out sick less often. (Especially those with asthma, not surprisingly.)

As for the affluence thing, the UMich folks said the improvement was equivalent to moving to a richer neighborhood (10% and 4% higher for reading/language arts and math, respectively) or having classes that were reduced by 7 to 10 students.

(Because the US isn’t wealthy enough to upgrade old buses across the country, the EPA has an annual funding lottery to choose randomly which school districts can get them.)

ICYMI: Face the face

A study out of Dartmouth is getting a lot of airplay even though it’s about a condition that affects fewer than 100 people. It’s called prosopometamorphopsia or PMO, and people who have it see faces as freakishly distorted. (Live ones, anyway. Photos and drawings look normal.)

The CNN story goes into a lot more detail, including an interview with a patient who explained “It’s like staring at demons. Imagine waking up one morning and suddenly everybody in the world looks like a creature in a horror movie.”

Yeah, that’s right — it happened all of a sudden when he was about 56 years old.

Some people with PMO see their own faces as distorted or even damaged. Two patients, “while standing in front of the mirror, saw one eye popping out of its socket and slithering down the cheek.” […] one patient described the right side of his doctor’s face in which the “eye became a ghastly staring hole, cheek bone a cavity; he had teeth on the upper lip, often had two ears.” Others with PMO have eloquently described faces as “like clocks in a Dalí painting” or “kaleidoscopically changing.”