Stuff You Should Know

In my ongoing effort to help you, dear reader, stay informed and on top of important stuff, I have this email folder titled “Blog Fodder” wherein I park news items worthy of your attention.

Here’s the fodder filling the folder these days…

Cash assistance = potentially smarter kids

A really interesting – and important – study found that babies of mothers that had received cash assistance had increased brain activity when compared to mom’s without cash assistance. From the study…

The resultant brain activity patterns have been shown to be associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.

WCRI’s Annual confab will include a session on Drug Formularies and the impact thereof. Register for the meeting here.

The good folks at Ametros collaborated on a study assessing CMS’ denial of payments for work comp-related claims. Evidently some folks thought this didn’t happen…turns out it does. Extrapolating from a random sample, researchers estimate CMS denied 36 thousand claims annually from 2018 to 2020.

Hear all about it in their February 15 webinar; register here.  And download the report here.

COVID good news.

From the NYT, the CDC released a study showing:

[boosters] are 90 percent effective against hospitalization with the [Omicron] variant, the agency reported. Booster shots also reduced the likelihood of a visit to an emergency department or urgent care clinic. The extra doses were most effective against infection and death among Americans aged 50 and older…

How effective for us oldsters?

VERY..unvaccinated Americans between 50 and 64 were 44 times more likely to end up in the hospital with Covid than those in the age group who were vaccinated and received a booster shot.

By Joe Paduda

Courtesy of Managed Care Matters

And really good news; from Charles Gaba, the uninsured rate for U.S. population was 8.9% for the third quarter of 2021 (July – September 2021), down from 10.3% for the last quarter of 2020 – corresponding to roughly 4.6 million more people with coverage over that time period.

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