News Briefs
Judge Blocks Trump from Cutting Billions in State Health Funding
A federal judge said she will grant a request from 23 states to issue an emergency block on the federal government's rescindment of billions in public health funds to states, cities, and organizations. The states' complaint, filed April 1 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, concerns roughly $11 billion awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services near the end of the COVID-19 emergency related to efforts on pandemic preparedness, mental health, overdose prevention, community health programs, and public health infrastructure.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2025-04-04)
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Healthcare Industry Concerned Tariffs Will Impact Supply Chains
Healthcare industry groups and analysts are reeling after President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping tariff policy that could impact global supply chains for everything from needles and catheters to diagnostic tests and glucose sensors. The import taxes are set to impact a broad array of materials necessary for healthcare delivery, said Kevin Holloran, senior director and sector leader of the not-for-profit healthcare group at Fitch Ratings.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2025-04-04)
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Lawsuit Against Major PBMs Will Move Forward as FTC Chair Returns
Andrew Ferguson, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, has decided to rejoin the agency's lawsuit against major pharmacy benefit managers, allowing the case to move forward and resuscitating a major challenge to the drug middlemen. The FTC paused the litigation against CVS' Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth's Optum Rx, saying it didn't have enough commissioners to try the case after President Donald Trump fired two Democrats last month.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2025-04-04)
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Hospital-Based ED Care Threatened by Falling Reimbursement Rates
Falling reimbursement rates, increases in uncompensated care, and claim denials are putting the "viability of hospital-based emergency care in the United States is at risk," according to a new RAND report. The report, supported by the Emergency Medicine Policy Institute, found that Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to physicians practicing in the emergency department both fell by 3.8 percent in real payment per visit from 2018 to 2022, meaning the payments were adjusted for inflation.
(Source: Tech Target, 2025-04-07)
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AI Helps Healthcare Pros with Billing, But Errors a Challenge
A recent survey of 800 Americans and 200 healthcare professionals found the majority (54 percent) of healthcare pros plan to adopt AI-driven billing systems within the next two years, while 30 percent have already integrated such tools into their operations. Nearly one in five healthcare workers said they now spend more than 20 hours each month correcting billing errors, a time drain contributing to staff burnout and patient dissatisfaction.
(Source: Healthcare IT News, 2025-04-07)
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Working Group Uses Risk Mapping to Boost Healthcare Cybersecurity
Healthcare cybersecurity remains a challenge for healthcare leaders, as data breaches and ransomware attacks continue to trouble the sector. The Health Sector Coordinating Council cybersecurity working group is aiming to track critical dependencies and identify vulnerabilities through a new risk mapping effort, which the HSCC CWG's Executive Director Greg Garcia announced at HIMSS25 in Las Vegas.
(Source: Tech Target, 2025-04-03)
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Cybersecurity Safety of Older Medical Devices a Concern
A house hearing on medical device cybersecurity included discussions on how hospitals and other providers can keep up with cyber threats as well as what the effect of massive layoffs at FDA and other HHS divisions will mean for cybersecurity safeguards. There are a broad range of medical devices that may be vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches, said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, at a subcommittee hearing on "Aging Technology, Emerging Threats: Examining Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in Legacy Medical Devices."
(Source: MedPage Today, 2025-04-01)
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Government Defends National Nursing Home Staffing Mandate
The federal government continues to defend a national nursing home staffing mandate in court, despite several members of the new presidential administration having expressed major concerns about the rule finalized in 2024. Department of Justice attorneys again outlined their justification for the rule, telling the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not exceed its legal authority in dictating 24-hour registered nurse coverage and 3.48 hours a day of direct patient care from every U.S. skilled nursing facility.
(Source: McKnight's Long-Term Care News, 2025-04-07)
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Study Projects Medical Device Industry Will Reach $1.3T by 2029
A study from BCC Research, Medical Devices Industry: Competitive Landscape, shows that the industry is projected to increase from $810.4 billion in 2024 to $1.3 trillion by the end of 2029. This is a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 percent for that period.
(Source: Medical Economics, 2025-04-02)
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Patients Not Finding Hospital Price Transparency Helpful
It's a holy grail of healthcare: forcing the industry to reveal prices negotiated between health plans and hospitals -- information that had long been treated as a trade secret, and among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed during his first five weeks back in office was a promise to "Make America Healthy Again" by giving patients accurate healthcare prices. But Trump's 2025 order is also a symbol of how little progress the country has made since he issued a similar directive nearly six years ago.
(Source: KFF Health News, 2025-04-02)
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