According to USA Today (1/18, Alltucker), this month, “the Biden administration…will begin spot audits of nursing home use of antipsychotic” medications “in an effort to cut down on inappropriate prescriptions.” Specifically, “the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will conduct ‘targeted, off-site audits’ to check whether nursing home patients who are prescribed” these medications “have a schizophrenia diagnosis.” The audit “initiative is part of the Biden administration’s larger effort to address long-standing patient safety and staffing shortcomings at nursing homes.”

The AP (1/18, Seitz) reports, “Evidence has mounted over decades that some facilities wrongly diagnose residents with schizophrenia or administer antipsychotic” medicines “to sedate them, despite dangerous side effects that could include death, according to the agency.” What’s more, “some facilities may be dodging increased scrutiny around gratuitous use of antipsychotic medications by coding residents as having schizophrenia, even when they do not show signs of the extremely rare disorder, a government report last year found.”

According to The Hill (1/18, Weixel), that “government watchdog report issued in November found about 80 percent of Medicare’s long-stay nursing home residents were prescribed a psychotropic” medication “from 2011 through 2019.” Meanwhile, “despite efforts to reduce the use of antipsychotic medicines, the prescribing of another type of psychotropic” medication, anti-seizure medicines, “increased, likely in an effort to reduce regulatory scrutiny, the report from the HHS Office of Inspector General found.” Modern Healthcare (1/18, Berryman, Subscription Publication) also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “‘A red flag’: Biden administration targets antipsychotic drugs dispensed in nursing homes “Ken Alltucker, USA Today, January 18, 2023

According to The Hill (1/17, Dress), starting Jan. 17, “veterans who are in a suicidal crisis can now seek emergency care at any medical facility at no cost to them.” Effective that date, they “will have free access to inpatient care or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days, the Department of Veterans Affairs” (VA) “said in a” Jan. 13 press release.

Related Links:

— “Veterans in suicidal crisis can now seek care at no cost “Brad Dress, The Hill, January 17, 2023

MedPage Today (1/17, Firth) reports, “Changes to Medicare policy that lowered out-of-pocket costs for outpatient mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) care, to achieve parity with typical cost-sharing under Medicare, were associated with uneven improvements in the use of these services across racial and ethnic groups,” researchers concluded in a study that “included 286,276 traditional Medicare beneficiaries with the cost-sharing reduction who had incomes at 100% to 135% of the federal poverty level…and 734,280 beneficiaries who received free care in 2008 who had incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level.” The study revealed that “improvements in access to care” were “largely only significant for white beneficiaries.” The findings were published in the January issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Psychiatric News (1/17) reports investigators sought to find out what US religious “leaders believe about the cause and treatment of depression,” focusing “specifically on the data obtained from the 890 primary leaders of religious congregations who predominantly completed the survey online between February 2019 and June 2020.” The study revealed that “most of the religious leaders indicated that they would be moderately or very likely to encourage a congregant with depression to seek help from a mental health professional (90%) and take prescribed medications (87%).” The study authors concluded, “These results suggest that medical professionals should view the vast majority of religious leaders as allies in identifying and properly treating depression.” The findings were published online Jan. 11 in a brief report in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Most U.S. Religious Leaders Endorse Medical Understanding of Depression, Survey Finds, Psychiatric News, January 17, 2023

The Washington Post (1/16, Blakemore) reports, “Military members and their families have unique mental health needs,” but research indicates that “up to 35 percent of military recipients don’t have access to adequate psychiatric care despite government insurance that covers such services.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after examining “39,487 U.S. Zip codes with at least one beneficiary of Tricare, the Defense Department health-care program that covers uniformed service members, retirees and their families,” then combining “data from a variety of federal sources with community information.” The findings were published online Jan. 3 in JAMA Network Open.

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

According to Kaiser Health News (1/13, Larson), Montana state “lawmakers from both parties have shown support for a plan to stop the practice of committing people with Alzheimer’s disease, other types of dementia, or traumatic brain injuries” (TBI) “without their consent to the troubled Montana State Hospital and instead direct them to treatment in their communities.” However, “a budget estimate attached to the proposed legislation raises questions about whether Montana communities, many of which are still reeling from past budget cuts and insufficient Medicaid reimbursement rates, will have the capacity to care for them by July 2025, when involuntary commitments would cease under the plan.”

Related Links:

— “Ending Involuntary Commitments Would Shift Burden of Dementia Care to Strapped Communities ” Keely Larson, Kaiser Health News, January 13, 2023

NPR (1/16, Chatterjee) reports, “The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline received over 1.7 million calls, texts and chats in its first five months,” a figure that is “nearly half a million more than the old 10-digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline fielded during the same period the year before.” According to federal data “the Lifeline responded to 154,585 more contacts – including calls, text messages and chats – in November 2022 than the same month the year before,” and “the average wait time to speak to a counselor also fell – from close to three minutes in November 2021, to 36 seconds last November.”

Related Links:

— “988 Lifeline sees boost in use and funding in first months “Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, January 16, 2023

HealthIT Security (1/12, McKeon) reports, “Cloud adoption has been on the rise in the healthcare sector for years for good reason as more organizations lean into digital transformation.” However, “despite rapid adoption, cloud technologies are not immune to security threats,” as “data from Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) company Netskope” revealed that “more than 400 distinct cloud applications delivered malware in 2022.” The report noted, “Cloud malware delivery increased in 2022 after having remained constant in 2021, caused by an increase in the total number of apps abused to deliver malware and the quantity of malware downloads coming from the most popular apps.”

Related Links:

— “Cybersecurity Risks Spike Within Cloud-Based Apps, Report Shows ” Jill McKeon, HealthIT Security , January 12, 2023

mHealth Intelligence (1/12, Melchionna) reports, “Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Fair Health Monthly Telehealth Regional tracker reported that telehealth use fell nationally and in every US census region last October, except usage in the Northeast.” The tracker found that “nationally, telehealth use dropped 3.7 percent, from 5.4 percent of medical claim lines in September to 5.2 percent in October.” Furthermore, “at the national level and in most regions, COVID-19 diagnoses fell,” while “acute respiratory diseases and infections rose in the diagnoses rankings.”

Related Links:

— “New Data Shows Telehealth Usage Drops by 4% Nationally Mark Melchionna” , mHealth Intelligence, January 12, 2023

Bloomberg (1/11, Pham) reports, “The effects of long COVID tend to resolve within a year of mild infection, with vaccinated people at lower risk of breathing difficulties compared with unvaccinated people, according to a study” in which “researchers examined the health records of almost 2 million people in Israel who tested for COVID-19 over a 19-month period.” More than “70 long COVID conditions were analyzed within a group of infected and matched uninfected members.”

NBC News (1/11, Edwards) reports “symptoms – such as chest pain, cough, muscle aches and hair loss – tended to fade away within a year.” The findings were published in The BMJ.

CNN (1/11, LaMotte) reports, “Only slight differences appeared between men and women in the study, but children had fewer early symptoms than adults, which were mostly gone by year’s end.”

Related Links:

— “Long Covid Study Shows Symptoms Fading for Mild Infections “Lisa Pham, Bloomberg, January 11, 2023