Author: Scott Welch

COVID-19 numbers continued to drop across California this week, as a case surge that lasted through the summer appears to be easing up. The California Department of Public Health on Friday reported the statewide COVID-19 case rate at 30.6 per 100,000 residents, a 9% decline in the past week. Statewide case rates have steadily declined ...

Hundreds waiting hours for a monkeypox vaccine only to be turned away. Residents taking to social media to detail struggles getting diagnosed and treated. State and local leaders demanding federal action. Emergency orders declared. At face value, these details paint the picture of a country and state in crisis, struggling to apply lessons learned from ...

Delays in getting children vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic and antivaccination sentiment in general may be fueling the most serious threat of polio in the U.S. in years, raising alarms from New York to California. In the last few weeks, health officials in New York identified the first person in nearly a decade in the ...

The Purchaser Business Group on Health has announced a new primary care agreement with five large payer organizations and with a provider serving California. Aledade, a physician-led ACO, and insurers Aetna, Blue Shield of California, Health Net, Oscar and UnitedHealthcare have signed a memorandum of understanding in the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative. They have agreed to increase investment ...

Managing costs and finding operational efficiencies topped the list of things that health plan leaders are concerned with, according to a new survey from HealthEdge. The digital health solutions company surveyed more than 300 health plan officials from a range of payer types, with the goal of providing a better understanding of what is top of mind ...

While the economy as a whole has experienced record-breaking inflation this year, price increases in the health care sector have been relatively subdued — a trend that could end soon as Medicare and other payers adjust to new economic realities. Rising costs, such as labor, have largely not translated to higher medical prices, in part ...

Just off the deserted town square, with its many boarded-up businesses, people lined up at the walk-up pharmacy window at Genesis Health Care, a federally funded clinic. Drug sales provide the bulk of the revenue for Genesis, a nonprofit community health center treating about 11,000 mostly low-income patients in seven clinics across South Carolina. Those ...

U.S. officials said they are able to ship out more monkeypox vaccine doses than previously planned — because of a strategy shift that allows more shots to be drawn from each vial. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had previously anticipated allowing 221,000 doses to be ordered starting Monday. But officials said they ...

Students at public schools across California can continue to receive at least two free meals a day at school this academic year, thanks to a state initiative launched during the pandemic. Under California’s Universal Meals Program, all public school students in grades transitional kindergarten through 12, regardless of their parents’ income, are eligible for free ...

Pharma rarely loses in Washington. For years, the industry has successfully defeated US government efforts to rein in drug pricing, arguing any such moves would prevent companies from developing newer and better medicines. That argument doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.