• Louisiana: Ochsner Health and Undue Medical Debt have partnered together to eliminate $366 million in medical debt for around 193,000 patients. Ochsner is the largest health system in Louisiana and has 46 hospitals and 370 clinics and urgent care centers across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. "Ochsner is proud to have worked with Undue Medical Debt to enable the organization to acquire and cancel past one-time debts for eligible residents," the organization said in a statement. According to the Associated Press, the deal followed the announcement of an agreement between Ochsner, Undue Medical Debt, and the city of New Orleans to eliminate over $59 million in medical debt for around 66,000 patients. "The city government gets a lot of credit for getting the ball rolling," said Daniel Lempert, VP for communications and marketing at Undue Medical Debt. "Once we got in the door and explained our model to the hospital, there were other debts that qualified for the program." (Associated Press, 8/22)
• Maryland: CMS has dropped a proposed policy that would have limited coverage for the types of blood tests organ transplant recipients often receive to monitor for signs of rejection. Under a previous coverage policy, Medicare covered two types of blood tests, a cell-free DNA test and a form of gene expression profiling used by transplant surgeons to monitor their patients. However, an article by MolDX released on CMS' website changed what Medicare would cover. Instead of two tests, doctors would be limited to using only one test, and Medicare would only pay for the test if it precluded the need for a biopsy and not for routine monitoring. After receiving pushback and criticism, the agency announced that it dropped the proposed policy and would issue a new one at a later date. "In response to public comments and upon further review of the evidence, the MACs [Medicare Administrative Contractors] are not finalizing the proposed LCD [local coverage determination] issued on August 10, 2023," CMS said. "Due to the importance of identifying solid organ allograft rejection early and to ensure the public has additional opportunities to comment on the policy, the MACs intend to issue a new LCD in the coming months." (Frieden, MedPage Today, 8/22)
• Missouri: Health officials in Missouri on Friday identified the first individual infected by bird flu who had not had any known exposure to infected animals or birds. Since March, bird flu has been detected in almost 200 dairy herds in 14 states. So far, the total number of human bird-flu infections in the United States is 14, with previous cases occurring due to interactions with infected poultry or dairy cattle. Currently, it is unknown how the latest patient became infected with bird flu, but health officials say they are trying to identify the source. "The route of transmission is going to determine how much more escalated the risk of the disease is to the general public," said Nahid Bhadelia, director of Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases at Boston University. CDC is currently conducting genetic analyses of the virus sample taken from the patient in Missouri to see how it might be different from the version of the virus circulating in dairy cattle. (Mandavilli, New York Times, 9/6)

The fight against COVID-19 has pushed healthcare to quickly adopt virtual tools at a rate much faster than normal. Some of the most promising pandemic-related health technologies go beyond just telehealth — for example, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Read on to learn three ways AI can be used to help with future pandemics.