Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 29, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of April 29, 2024–May 3, 2024.

The Washington Post (5/1, Gilbert, Diamond) reports, “Congressional leaders unloaded blistering criticism at UnitedHealth Group in a pair of hearings Wednesday, saying the health care conglomerate’s handling of a cyberattack had damaged the U.S. health system, threatened the financial stability of hospitals and doctors and put tens of millions of patients’ data at risk.” In hearings in front of both the House and Senate, “UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty repeatedly apologized for the hack of subsidiary Change Healthcare, vowed that he and the company will not rest ‘until we fix this,’ and said the company was offering no-interest loans to affected hospitals and doctors and free credit monitoring to affected patients.” As of late March and early April, around “80% of physician practices surveyed by the American Medical Association said they were still feeling the effects of the cyberattack.”

Reuters (5/1, Aboulenein, Siddiqui) reports, “Pressed for details on the data compromised, Witty said ‘maybe a third’ of Americans’ protected health information and personally identifiable information was stolen.” The attack was carried out by “cybercriminal gang AlphV,” which “hacked into Change on Feb. 12 using stolen login credentials on an older server that did not have multi-factor authentication, Witty said.” The server “did not have the security measures prescribed in a joint alert issued by the FBI and U.S. cyber and health officials in December 2023 to specifically warn about AlphV, or BlackCat, targeting health care organizations.”

Healthcare Finance News (5/1, Morse) reports, “In testimony given to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, the American Medical Association said the findings in its latest AMA survey of physicians conducted between April 19 and April 24 strongly dispute UnitedHealth Group’s assurances that systems are nearly back to pre-outage functioning and claims are again flowing through the system.” AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, “warned of the dangers of consolidation, such as that between Change and UnitedHealth. In 2021, the AMA notified the Department of Justice of several antitrust concerns regarding the proposed merger.”

Editor’s Note: To read the latest AMA updates on the Change Healthcare cyberattack, click here.

CNN (5/1, Holcombe) reports, “Does it ever feel as if your anger courses through your veins? Well, that isn’t too far off, according to new research.” Angry feelings “adversely affect blood vessel health, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.” In the study, “researchers divided 280 participants and gave them a task that made them recall feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety or neutrality for eight minutes. Before and several times after the task, the researchers took measures of the individuals’ vascular health.”

NBC News (5/1, Mantel) reports, “The researchers found blood vessels’ ability to dilate was significantly reduced among people in the angry group compared with those in the control group. Blood vessel dilation wasn’t affected in the sadness and anxiety groups.” Impairment of blood vessel dilation “is an early marker for atherosclerosis, which is the buildup of fats and cholesterol, called plaque, on artery walls that make the arteries stiff. Atherosclerosis can lead to coronary heart disease, heart attack, stroke and kidney disorders.”

The New York Times (4/30, Rabin) reports, “Citing rising breast cancer rates in young women,” the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force on Tuesday “recommended starting regular mammography screening at age 40, reversing longstanding and controversial guidance that most women wait until 50.” The panel “finalized a draft recommendation made public last year. The group issues influential advice on preventive health, and its recommendations usually are widely adopted in the United States.” Some 15 years ago, “the task force raised the age for starting routine mammograms to 50 from 40, sparking wide controversy.” Now, however, “breast cancer rates among women in their 40s are on the rise, increasing by 2% a year between 2015 and 2019.”

The AP (4/30, Johnson) reports the recommendations “were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.” The AP adds that other medical groups “suggest mammograms every year – instead of every other year – starting at age 40 or 45, which may cause confusion.”

According to USA Today (4/30, Alltucker), “The task force said medical evidence drawn from studies suggests every-other-year screening of breast tissue provides a ‘moderate net benefit’ for women up to age 74.” The experts “said there isn’t enough evidence to recommend routine screening for women 75 and older.” They “also did not endorse supplemental screening methods such as ultrasounds or MRIs for women with dense breast tissue. [Physicians] should use their judgment about ordering screening for those populations, the task force said.”

The AP (4/29, Perrone) reports, “Makers of medical tests that have long escaped government oversight will have about four years to show that their new offerings deliver accurate results, under a government rule vigorously opposed by the testing industry.” The FDA regulation “will gradually phase in oversight of new tests developed by laboratories, a multibillion-dollar industry that regulators say poses growing risks to Americans.” The aim “is to ensure that new tests for cancer, heart disease, COVID-19, genetic conditions and many other illnesses are safe, accurate and reliable.”

Reuters (4/29, Sunny) reports, “Under the new rules, these tests would be required to meet the same requirements as other diagnostic tests from medical device makers, including the FDA’s review of their applications and the reporting of adverse events.”

The Hill (4/29, Choi) reports that in the past, such tests “were typically manufactured in small volumes to diagnose rare diseases. At the time, the FDA’s rationale for not enforcing regulations on these tests were that they were low-risk and were employed for a small patient population.” However, the laboratory-developed tests “have grown in use over the years, as have concerns over their lack of regulatory oversight.”

Fierce Healthcare (4/26, Landi) reports, “The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a rule Friday that aims to tighten the reins on digital health apps sharing consumers’ sensitive medical data with tech companies.” The FTC “issued a final version of its revised Health Breach Notification Rule to underscore the rule’s applicability to health apps in a bid to protect consumers’ data privacy and provide more transparency about how companies collect their health information.” According to Fierce Healthcare, “The Health Breach Notification Rule...requires vendors that manage digital health records, including health apps, that are not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to notify individuals, the FTC, and, in some cases, the media of a breach of unsecured personally identifiable health data.”

Editor’s Note: You may also be interested in the AMA response to UnitedHealth confirmation of stolen data from Change Healthcare.

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