President Biden signed on Friday an executive order that the White House bills as an effort to target anticompetitive practices in tech, healthcare and other parts of the economy while boosting workers’ wages and consumer protections.

The sweeping order includes 72 actions and recommendations that the White House says “will lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth.”

The order includes calls for banning or limiting noncompete agreements to help boost wages, allowing rule changes that would pave the way for hearing aids to be sold over the counter at drugstores and banning excessive early termination fees by internet companies. It also calls on the Transportation Department to consider issuing rules requiring airlines to refund fees when baggage is delayed or in-flight services are not provided as advertised.

“In total, higher prices and lower wages caused by lack of competition are now

Despite a global pandemic and an armed rebellion, Ted Hooley wouldn’t give up on his vision to build a health clinic in the Central African Republic.

The Stillwater native and St. John’s University graduate knew he wanted to use his skills to help underserved people in developing countries. But he didn’t always know how that would look. Maybe he would work abroad as a consultant for a country’s ministry of health — a job he tried while completing his graduate degree in global human development at Georgetown University.

After working in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis, Hooley realized his calling wasn’t in consulting. It was on the ground in communities.

“There’s nothing that beats being in a village with people and just making that person-to-person connection,” said Hooley, 33. “That’s what really gives me energy.”

In 2016, Hooley laid the groundwork for his humanitarian health nonprofit, Senitizo,

In the latest state-level swing at LGBTQ health care access, Ohio will now allow medical providers to refuse to administer any medical treatment that violates their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

The language was buried in a 700-page document of last-minute amendments to the state’s two-year budget bill, which Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine approved last Thursday. The provision allows anyone providing medical care — from doctors and nurses to researchers and lab techs – and anyone paying for that care (namely, insurance providers), “the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.” 

The bill does not allow medical professionals to deny LGBTQ people care, carte blanche; the exemption “is limited to conscience-based objections to a particular health care service.” It goes on to say that the provider

Dive Brief:

• Stoltenberg Consulting annual’s healthcare IT outlook survey concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has rearranged their priorities. Moreover, the pandemic has “raised the bar for the digital health experiences.”

• Health system chief information officers are now valuing patient engagement over artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to the poll of 65 CIOs, who have previously ranked AI and machine learning as their top priority.

• Meanwhile, CIOs say their biggest priority is updating their electronic health records (EHR) systems, along with beefing up cybersecurity and data analytics, although a much larger proportion said that getting the most out of their existing IT purchases was their top priority.

Dive Insight:

COVID-19 has changed much in healthcare over the past year, and it appears hospital IT departments are no exception. The consultancy’s ninth annual survey, conducted in conjunction with College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, confirms that there has been a paradigm

Fells Point-based healthcare analytics compliance firm Protenus closed on $21 million in new funding as it sees continued growth for AI-based analytics in hospital systems.

The Series D round included participation from new investors MemorialCare Innovation Fund, the venture fund of Southern California’s MemorialCare Health System, and Gaingels, a syndicate representing the LGBT+ community and allies. All of the company’s existing investors also joined the round, including Transformation Capital, Providence Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Arthur Ventures and Lionbird. The company has now raised $57.2 million.

Using AI-based analytics, Protenus works with hospitals to monitor snooping in electronic medical records and narcotic drug diversion, which is when prescription drugs are obtained illegally. This allows leaders to see how data is being used, and provides alerts if there is anything inappropriate. Healthcare in general is regulated by strict privacy laws, and Protenus’ platform helps to ensure

The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC) has identified 806 reported incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care in 43 countries and territories experiencing conflict in 2020.

These figures (806) represent a decline compared to the overall number of reports identified by the SHCC in 2019, which recorded 1,203 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care in 20 countries and territories. However, they represent a 25% increase in the number of health workers who were killed and kidnapped in 2020 (185 killed and 117 kidnapped, compared to 151 killed and 90 kidnapped in 2019) and a 65% decrease in the reported number of health workers injured (175 in 2020 compared to 502 injured in 2019).

In 2020, 65 health workers were arrested, 152 threatened, 175 injured, 38 assaulted and three subjected to sexual violence in 43 countries and territories experiencing conflict in 2020. During the year,

MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. The novel coronavirus pandemic is far from being over, but professionalism and devotion of healthcare workers helped to save millions of lives, Russian Healthcare Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Sunday in his address on the occasion of the Medical Worker Day.

“Maximum devotion of every healthcare worker allowed us to save millions of lives. We have already proved that we can contain the new pandemic, can deal with every blow and repel the global threat. In the past year and a half, everyone has been working under immense pressure, sometimes exceeding our limits. Every day, medical workers demonstrate unrivaled professionalism and wholehearted devotion to the profession. Many of us have fallen ill, many had to undergo a difficult journey to recovery, but they keep returning to their profession. Each of you deserves deepest respect and gratitude,” the address reads.

Murashko expressed hope that medical workers will