“Take me to Ruleville,” an advertising slogan for North Sunflower Medical Center has become one of the best known and often repeated phrases in the Delta. Robyn Marlow, Director of Community and Employee Relations at North Sunflower Medical Center has an interesting story to tell about how the slogan originated. 

Newly unemployed Mississippians have lost health insurance and face a global pandemic without adequate access to health care.

A new Certificate of Need (CON) Weekly Report is now available on the Mississippi State Department of Health website. 

The company says it’s looking beyond traditional retail clinics as it seeks to create “supercenters” with comprehensive healthcare services.

Houston-based Harris Health System CIO David Chou penned an article for Forbes outlining how health IT executives can ‘put on their financial hat’ to cut costs and generate revenue to make up for revenue declines during the pandemic.

AAMC projected the physician shortage to worsen through 2033, with an estimated shortfall of 54,100 to 139,000 physicians.

Data from 50,000 healthcare providers suggests that ambulatory practice visits have not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Beginning July 1, certain hospital outpatient department services require prior authorization as a condition of payment. While only hospital OPD service requires prior authorization, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to remind other providers that perform services in the hospital OPD setting that claims related to or associated with these services will not be paid if the service requiring prior authorization is not eligible for payment. These related services include, but are not limited to, anesthesiology services, physician services and facility services. Only associated services performed in the OPD setting are affected. Depending on the timing of claim submission for any related services, claims may be automatically denied or denied on a post-payment basis.

The annual 340B Drug Pricing Program recertification period for hospitals is scheduled to begin Aug. 17. Hospitals will have until Sept. 14 to complete the process.

Catastrophic Financial Impact of COVID-19 Expected to Top $323 Billion in 2020

Several payment policies and regulatory adjustments are attached to the public health emergency, so the extension is welcome news for healthcare providers.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added the AustinP51 emergency-use system to its list of ventilators authorized for emergency use in health care settings to treat adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The device is a portable emergency use resuscitator designed to provide either continuous or intermittent ventilatory support for patients requiring mechanical ventilation through volume control. The agency said the AustinP51 should only be used by professionals who are qualified and trained in the use of general ventilation equipment, or who are specifically trained on the AustinP51 system.

The American Medical Association (AMA) announced a new Current Procedural Terminology code (87426) for reporting antigen testing to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection on medical claims. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month issued the first emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 antigen test, which can quickly detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a nasal swab sample.

SARS-CoV-2 infections may be 10 times higher than reported cases, according to new data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention partnership with commercial laboratories to test de-identified clinical blood specimens for antibodies in Connecticut, South Florida, the New York City area, Missouri, Utah and western Washington state. The seroprevalence survey includes people who had blood specimens tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies for reasons unrelated to COVID-19, such as for a routine or sick visit. CDC is working with state and local health departments to publish additional results from California, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. The survey aims to test about 1,800 samples from each of the 10 areas every 3 to 4 weeks to track changes in the percentage of people tested who have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in each area.

The University of New Mexico School of Medicine’s Project ECHO July 2 will host at 12 p.m. ET a collaborative webinar on COVID-19’s treatment using dexamethasone and other steroids. Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is the university’s effort to demonopolize knowledge and amplify the capacity to provide best practice care for underserved people all over the world. National and international physicians will lead the session, with time for Q&A and general discussion. Register here.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenge to the nation’s healthcare infrastructure like few in our history. To address these challenges, Congress, federal agencies, and states are taking numerous steps to enable wider use of connected health tools to serve patients during the public health crisis.