Weekend Update

The House of Representatives and the Senate return to work this week after a week long recess. The week, May 6 - 12, is Public Service Recognition week.

One of the multitude of Affordable Care Act mandates on health plans was to lower out-of-pocket costs for emergency room visits. This mandate kicked in for non-grandfathered plans for 2011. (Virtually all plans are non-grandfathered at this point.) Lo and behold, a recent survey from Highroads reports that "Employees and their families are making more trips to the emergency room (ER), urgent care facilities and specialists’ offices as relatively low co-pay costs are narrowing the gap between those and other services – notably primary care physicians."

In this year's benefit and rate call letter, OPM encouraged plans to eliminate elective deliveries before 39 weeks. This is part of HHS's Strong Start initiative which, among other things, focuses on

early elective deliveries, which can lead to a variety of health problems for mothers and infants.  Up to 10 percent of all deliveries are scheduled as induced or surgical deliveries before 39 weeks that are not medically indicated. However, any early delivery, planned or spontaneous, can carry medical risks for mother and infant. According to research by organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the March of Dimes and others, elective deliveries before 39 weeks increase the risk of significant complications for mother and baby, as well as long-term health problems. 

The FEHBlog found support for this initiative in a recent March of Dimes and World Health Organization survey reported by WebMD which finds that the pre-term birth rates in the U.S. are higher than 130 other countries. WebMD reports that

Hyagriv Simhan, MD, chief of maternal-fetal medicine and medical director of obstetrical services at Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says the report is "incredibly valuable."

The best way to minimize the risk of preterm birth is to plan pregnancy carefully, Simhan tells WebMD.

"Don't wait until there is a complication to seek care, as then it is too late. Start planning even before conception, and make smart lifestyle choices, such as eating right and quitting smoking," he says.

Also, babies should be spaced at least a year apart, Simhan says.

Finally, also on the preventive care front, the Los Angeles Times reports that "The number of baby boomers dying from a "silent epidemic" of hepatitis C infections is increasing so rapidly that federal officials are planning a new nationwide push for widespread testing."  The government has been encouraging people at risk, e.g., those wbo used illegal injectable drugs in their youth or received blood transfusions before the AIDS crisis in the 1980s - be tested. Because doctors don't usually asked older people about youthful indiscretions, Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") is considering recommending that all people born between 1945 and 1965 be tested for this disease which is the leading infectious cause of cirrohisis and liver cancer in the U.S. The Times reports that

The CDC recommendation is coming in an era when safer, faster and more effective drug treatments are becoming available, and more are being tested. The new medications still have side effects but increase the odds of suppressing the virus and its complications, according to research.
Health officials say the new medications, although they aren't cheap, are far less costly than liver transplants and liver cancer treatment, which can climb into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.