Medical Journal December 2020 Digital Edition
December 19, 20201 min
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What Congress gives, the IRS can take away
December 19, 202012 min
By Catherine Lightfoot, CPA, CHBC, Director of Healthcare at EEPB, and T. Brett Mach, J.D., Atty, Director at EEPB InnovaTax 2020 brought many things no one expected: a pandemic, economic lockdowns, and government bailouts. 2021 is offering hope to many in terms of a vaccine and the promise of re-opened economies. Hope for 2021 aside; the bailout may bring some surprises for taxpayers for those who took advantage of them, especially those in the service...
2020’s wild ride: what healthcare employers learned and the issues they are likely to face in 2021
December 19, 202013 min
By A. Kevin Troutman If this year had been a heavyweight fight, the referee probably would have stopped it. Throughout 2020, healthcare employers absorbed one thundering haymaker after another. If that were not challenging enough, the year was filled with surprises, with more zigs and zags than the scariest rollercoaster. While the worldwide pandemic and its challenges took center-stage, employers faced a string of additional challenges: heightened racial tensions and social justice protests, with images...
COVID-19 and the world disorder of public health
December 19, 20209 min
By Victor S. Sierpina, MD Are we ready for the next pandemic? In a thoughtful essay by Lainie Rutkow, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, calls the field of public health an “invisible discipline.” This has been particularly true during non-crisis periods across the international stage. The essay is published in a recent book, COVID-19 and the World Order: The Future of Conflict, Competition, and...
A COVID-19 holiday: Closing the year together
December 19, 20206 min
By Ted Shaw, President/CEO, Texas Hospital Association Almost a year ago, COVID-19 was a deadly disease at arm’s length from the United States – an issue overseas we watched and hoped would stay boxed in and contained. We expected limited impact on health and human life. Today, COVID-19 is our central focus as we head into the holidays. In 2020, we faced shortages of staff, testing supplies and personal protective equipment. We fought desperately for...
Texas Children’s Fetal Center teaches its innovative fetoscopic spina bifida repair technique using telemedicine to international colleagues during COVID-19 pandemic
December 19, 20208 min
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a global impact, surgeons at Texas Children’s Fetal Center® have turned to technology to continue teaching their innovative, minimally invasive technique for repairing spina bifida in-utero to fetal surgeons worldwide. Pioneered by a team at Texas Children’s in 2014 led by Dr. Michael Belfort, obstetrician-in-chief at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine, the paradigm-shifting technique allows surgeons...
Novel antibody-drug conjugate shows promising early results in rare blood cancer
December 19, 20206 min
A phase I/II study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found IMGN632, a novel CD123-targeting antibody-drug conjugate, was tolerable and resulted in a 29% overall response rate in patients with relapsed/refractory blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN), a rare, but aggressive, form of leukemia, and a 31% overall response rate in BPDCN patients with prior tagraxofusp treatment. Early results from the study were presented by Naveen Pemmaraju, M.D., associate professor of Leukemia. BPDCN is known as...
New study links increased risk of cancer to proximity to oil refineries
December 19, 20204 min
A team of physicians, environmental scientists and students at the University of Texas Medical Branch have completed a multi-year study of cancer rates among individuals living in close proximity to oil refineries and have found statistically significant increases in several cancers among those living nearest to these facilities. The study, Proximity to Oil Refineries and Risk of Cancer: A Population-Based Analysis, was led by Dr. Stephen B. Williams, Chief of Urology and a tenured professor of...
CMS releases new safe harbors as year ends
December 19, 20208 min
By Beth Anne Jackson and Allison Shelton, Brown & Fortunato, P.C. In the December 2, 2020 issue of the Federal Register, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) published significant changes to the Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark) and Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) rules. These changes added protections for value-based care arrangements and altered some fundamental tenets of the rules. The revised rules will affect a wide variety of...