3 minute read
Industry News
from REP Sept 22
McKesson was recently named to the 2022 “Forbes Best Employers for Women” list. Forbes teamed up with market research company Statista to identify the companies leading the way when it comes to trying to support women inside and outside their workforces with its annual ranking of America’s Best Employers For Women, Forbes said. The list was compiled by surveying 50,000 Americans – 30,000 women and 20,000 men – working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees. All respondents were asked to rate their organizations on criteria such as working conditions, diversity and how likely they’d be to recommend their employer to others.
McKesson was ranked No. 24 on the list.
“This recognition exemplifies our ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. (DEI),” McKesson said on social media.
BD, CerTest Biotec announce commercial launch of monkeypox test
BD and CerTest Biotec announced their newly developed molecular polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for the monkeypox virus is now commercially available outside of the United States for use in research applications by laboratories.
The assay leveraged the BD MAX™ System open system reagent suite to develop the CerTest VIASURE Monkeypox molecular test on the BD MAX™ System.
“One of the key advantages of the BD MAX™ System is its openarchitecture system that enables rapid response to emerging health threats,” said Nikos Pavlidis, vice president of Molecular Diagnostics at BD. “Just as we did at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we partnered with CerTest to quickly develop a molecular test to help better understand and track this disease.”
The BD MAX™ System is a fully integrated, automated platform that performs nucleic acid extraction and real-time PCR providing results for up to 24 samples across multiple syndromes in less than three hours. BD offers an extensive menu of tests on the system covering health care associated infections, respiratory infections, sexually transmitted infections, gastrointestinal infections and women’s health. BD offers a suite of open system reagents for the BD MAX™ System that enables labs to fully automate and streamline their Lab Developed Tests.
“Speed is of the essence when responding to what the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency,” Nelson Fernandes, managing director of CerTest Biotec. “We hope this new test will boost capacity for monkeypox research, ultimately helping quell the spread of the disease.”
As with all CerTest tests, the Monkeypox PCR Detection Kit for the BD MAX™ System is offered in a lyophilized format. Accordingly, the test will come in a tube that snaps into the test-specific position on the BD MAX™ ExK™ TNA extraction strip, which is supplied by BD.
Based on a research brief from Altarum, national healthcare spending has declined for the first time in 60 years in the first quarter of 2022.
The CMS National Health Expenditure Accounts said that from 1960 to 2020, healthcare spending growth has been positive and greater than economy-wide inflation. Healthcare spending growth was flat in 2021 and even declined in Q1 of 2022.
According to the research, the slow growth in healthcare prices is likely a result of government policies and delays in contract negotiations. HCPI is projected to rise as 2022 prices reflect higher negotiated rates for care.
Medical spending as a percent of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) peaked at 20.8 percent in 2019 and fell to 19.5 percent in Q1 2022. This figure likely shifted in 2020 before real healthcare spending dropped because healthcare providers received federal funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which are included in real healthcare spending.
“Decreasing the long-term trajectory of healthcare spending in the US has been a longstanding goal of policymakers and business leaders, and these new data in some ways indicate a short period of success in this arena,” the brief stated. “However, despite indications of a slowing healthcare cost trend over the past 18 months, many of these impacts are expected to be short-lived.”
