Following a series of high-profile—and costly—cyberattacks against the healthcare industry, the federal government is stepping in with a $50+ million initiative intended to boost hospital cybersecurity, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on May 20.

Large cybersecurity breaches in the healthcare sector have increased by 256% in the last five years, and ransomware incidents have increased by 264%, according to HHS data. A massive cyberattack against Change Healthcare began in February, for example, and lasted over a month, costing providers an estimated $100 million per day. And earlier this month, national hospital operator Ascension reported a cyberattack that’s forced many of its employees to transition to manual recordkeeping.

The initiative, called Universal Patching and Remediation for Autonomous Defense, or UPGRADE, is meant to shorten the time it takes hospitals to detect and respond to potential cyberattacks, per an ARPA-H press release. It will be run by an HHS division called the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, which was formed in 2022 to support health and biomedical research.

One of the biggest challenges to improving hospital cybersecurity is the fact that hospitals use many different internet-connected devices, according to ARPA-H.

Keep reading here.—MA

Landing on correct test codes can feel like its own kind of puzzle—one without an answer key. To top it off, healthcare pros now have to learn new ones that correspond with optimized allergy test profiles.

But don’t fret. Get the most up-to-date test codes with the Lab Ordering Guide (LOG) instead. The LOG helps you find the most recent test codes with ease, thanks to features like:

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• an inside look at profiles and the allergens included within

Make sure you’re ordering up-to-date test codes and get info on how to interpret ImmunoCAP™ Specific IgE test results.

Snag the most recent test codes.

Digital health tools could help patients trying to lower their risk for heart disease, a new study published Friday in the Journal of the American Heart Association found.

Researchers analyzed more than 100,000 people who used digital therapeutic company Hello Heart’s mobile app and heart health monitor over a span of five years and saw reductions in blood pressure (BP), total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC), and weight—all major risk factors for heart disease, according to the study.

These researchers included Edo Paz—lead author of the study, Hello Heart’s SVP of medical affairs, and a cardiologist at White Plains Hospital in New York—and clinical leaders from Hello Heart, CVS Health, Aetna, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the American Heart Association’s Center for Health Technology and Innovation.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death across genders and most racial and ethnic groups, according to the CDC. It’s also expensive for the healthcare industry: In one year between 2018 and 2019, for example, heart disease cost an estimated $239 billion in healthcare services, medicines, and lost productivity, according to one study cited by the CDC.

Keep reading here.—NB

Finance leaders are stressed by increasingly volatile health insurance claims and by the long-term growth in healthcare costs, which many of them said will affect business results if it keeps outpacing overall inflation in the coming years.

The volatility has been making it more difficult to accurately forecast healthcare costs, CFOs and other finance leaders of 80 mostly large companies told Mercer, which published a report this month based on surveys in February and March.

Not that forecasting was easy before, as evidenced by the 72% of respondents who said their expenses are more difficult to predict for healthcare than other areas, the 67% who worried about the costs of their benefits “compared to other operating expenses,” and the 65% who said they reforecast two or more times each year. More than two in five said their benefits team told them to expect more volatility in their claims this year.

One thing that is easy to predict: the upward march of healthcare costs above overall inflation. It’s been growing about 1%–2% above inflation for the last two decades, “but even to maintain that level of cost growth will be difficult,” according to the report. Nearly all organizations surveyed (94%) would be in trouble if costs rise above CPI+2% over the next three to five years.

Keep reading here.—GD

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