SCAN Health Plan, a Medicare Advantage insurer, will begin offering health plans in two Texas counties and grow its services in Nevada in 2023, the company announced last week. With the expansion, pending CMS approval, Long Beach, California-based SCAN will reach nearly 7 million potential customers across four states, including California and Arizona, according to a news release. The counties […]

The U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal judge this week to bar Idaho from enforcing its near-total abortion ban while a lawsuit pitting federal healthcare law against state anti-abortion legislation is underway. Meanwhile, the Republican-led Idaho Legislature is asking for permission to intervene in the federal case, just as it has done in three other abortion-related lawsuits filed in […]

Earlier this year, a temporary option to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months took effect. This option, included in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), is part of a broader federal and state effort to address racial disparities and improve maternal and infant health outcomes. Medicaid is a key source of coverage for low-income women in […]

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new strategy to stretch the limited available doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine by changing how the vaccine is injected. The new method would split up the doses and use one-fifth as much vaccine per shot. The partial dose of the vaccine would be injected into the upper layer of skin, rather than […]

As the saying goes, “You can’t make a second first impression.” And in no industry does a first impression carry quite as much weight as in healthcare. Healthcare providers are making a big ask of their patients—they’re asking patients to trust them to manage their most precious resource: their health. So the first touch carries ramifications far beyond that interaction—it […]

Health Tech Manav Sevak is the (young and very smart) CEO of Memora Health. I must admit to thinking that their service was just a patient chatbot, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s digitizing care workflows that touch both patients and of course the clinical care teams that support them–especially outside the walls of the hospital. They also […]

Las mismas técnicas de vigilancia de aguas residuales que se han convertido en una herramienta crítica en la detección temprana de brotes de covid-19 se están adaptando para monitorear la alarmante propagación de la viruela del simio en el Área de la Bahía de San Francisco y en otras comunidades de Estados Unidos. Antes de la pandemia de covid, se […]

  Merck’s neuroscience portfolio is thin and there hasn’t been much in this part of the pharmaceutical giant’s pipeline since the failure of an Alzheimer’s disease drug in a pivotal clinical trial five years ago. Biotech company Cerevance has had success discovering and advancing a Parkinson’s disease drug candidate and Merck now wants to tap the startup’s technology to see […]

BY KIM BELLARD Things are tough all over the job market.  With a jobless rate at 3.5%, and with millions of people who left the job market in 2020 opting to not return to work, employers are having a hard time finding workers.  Your favorite restaurant or retail store probably has a “Help Wanted” sign out.  Checking your bag for […]