Medical Journal February 2022 edition
February 16, 20221 min
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Department of Justice recovers $5 billion from health care fraud
February 16, 20228 min
By Beth Anne Jackson and Allison Shelton, Brown & Fortunato, P.C. In its annual report on False Claims Act (FCA) recoveries released February 1, 2022, the Department of Justice confirmed that health care fraud was “once again the leading source” of its FCA settlements and judgments, totaling more than $5 billion in the fiscal year 2021. This compares to $1.8 billion in FY2020. Before reviewing the details of the report, it is worthwhile to examine...
Wealth accumulation: Here’s how it works!
February 16, 20228 min
By Catherine Lightfoot, CPA, CHBC, Director of Healthcare at EEPB Believe it or not, financial independence is not just for the super-wealthy or the inherited rich. By focusing on four key areas, practiced consistently, everyone can achieve a measure of wealth and financial security. Wherever you are in your career, making a few modest changes will improve your net worth. In this article, I share the common practices of those I witnessed to have accumulated...
CMS vaccination mandate in Texas: Is your facility ready?
February 16, 202213 min
By Jacqueline Del Villar and Kevin Troutman, Fisher Phillips With major legal challenges now behind it, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is moving forward with the implementation and enforcement of a rule that will require essentially all “staff” at covered healthcare facilities in Texas to have received COVID-19 vaccinations. The first major deadline is now just days away. When the U.S. Supreme Court ended a whirlwind of legal challenges by ruling that...
Meditation is an easily available and effective method to improve our health
February 16, 20228 min
By Victor S. Sierpina, MD The mark of the educated man is not in his boast that he has built his mountain of facts and stood on the top of it, but in his admission that there may be other peaks in the same range with men on the top of them, and that, though their views of the landscape may be different from his, they are nonetheless legitimate. -E.J. Pratt, poet Meditation is one...
Critical funding remains in limbo as pandemic wears on
February 16, 20226 min
By John Hawkins, President/CEO, Texas Hospital Association While much of our attention lately has been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and related challenges, another crisis has been quietly brewing with the potential to drastically impede health care delivery across Texas. Since last fall, supplement payment programs that raise hospitals’ Medicaid reimbursements closer to the actual cost of care either expired or are still awaiting federal approval. Months have now passed without Medicaid providers receiving these...
Antibody with engineered peptide targets bone metastasis
February 16, 20223 min
A moderate amount of a peptide-enhanced, biological cancer drug goes a long way in treating breast cancers that metastasize to the bone. A study by scientists at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine demonstrated the effective treatment of such cancers in rodent models, bringing hope for new therapies to treat bone metastases. The open-access study advances techniques pioneered by Rice chemist Han Xiao and his co-author at Baylor, biologist Xiang Zhang. They discovered through extensive testing that...
Trametinib represents potential new standard-of-care for patients with recurrent low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma
February 16, 20226 min
A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported that the MEK inhibitor trametinib reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 52% compared to standard-of-care therapies for the treatment of low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma. The international, multi-center Phase II/III trial led by David Gershenson, M.D., professor of Gynecologic Oncology & Reproductive Medicine, is the first positive randomized clinical trial of any therapy to demonstrate significantly increased progression-free survival (PFS) and objective...
Study reveals HPV vaccine impact on anal cancer
February 16, 20222 min
In a new study, researchers found evidence that HPV vaccination is reducing the incidence of anal cancer among young adults in the US. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch analyzed data from the US Cancer Statistics database from 2001 to 2018 to examine anal cancer incidences among different age groups and determine the potential impact of HPV vaccination. They found that cancer incidence among young adults 20 to 44 years of age began to rapidly and significantly decrease within...
Houston Methodist Clear Lake Hospital welcomes pulmonologist Dr. Ravikanth Papani
February 16, 20222 min
Houston Methodist Clear Lake Hospital is pleased to welcome Ravikanth Papani, M.D., to its specialty physician group. Papani is board-certified in pulmonology, critical care, and internal medicine. He is opening a new practice – Houston Methodist Pulmonary Specialists at Clear Lake – that will focus on a range of chronic lung conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, pulmonary hypertension, sleep apnea, and pulmonary rehabilitation. Papani earned his medical degree from...