The state's proposal would allow Georgia residents to purchase subsidized individual health plans directly from insurers or through direct enrollment brokers, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Georgia, and Maryland.
- District of Columbia/Maryland: Adventist HealthCare beginning Feb. 17 will take over operations for Howard University Hospital. Under a three-year management services agreement, Adventist will work with the hospital to bring in new leadership, build a replacement hospital, and train the university's medical students at Adventist's network of hospitals. Howard University Hospital's new CEO will be Anita L.A. Jenkins, who previously served as Sycamore Medical Center's president in Miamisburg, Ohio, and Kettering Medical Center's COO in Dayton, Ohio (Ellison, Becker's Hospital Review, 2/7)
- Georgia/Maryland: CMS on Thursday announced it is postponing a decision on Georgia's 1332 waiver request to overhaul the state's individual health insurance market. The state's proposal would allow Georgia to abandon the Affordable Care Act's exchanges in favor of permitting state residents to purchase subsidized individual health plans directly from insurers or through direct enrollment brokers, among other things. CMS recently asked the state for additional information on the proposal, and Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last week asked the agency to delay its review of the request (Findlay, Kaiser Health News, 2/7).
- Maryland: NIH stopped a clinical trial in South Africa testing an experimental HIV vaccine after early data showed the vaccine did not protect patients against the virus. The trial, launched by NIH's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2016, tested the use of an experimental vaccine that uses a bird virus called canarypox to deliver an HIV protein into a patient's body. Research hypothesized that the patient's immune system would eventually recognize the protein and produce antibodies. However, early results from the trial showed 129 participants who were vaccinated with the experimental treatment contracted HIV infections, while 123 participants who were not vaccinated contracted HIV (McNeil, New York Times, 2/4).