A handful of startups are offering solutions for a growing healthcare need that isn’t going away: transporting elderly, frail patients to nonemergency medical appointments.

States that expanded eligibility for Medicaid in 2014 and 2015 saw an immediate uptick in Medicaid prescriptions filled for diabetes treatments, suggesting the legislation played a direct role in improving access and adherence to those drugs.

Specifically, the kits provide prior authorization information for PCSK9 inhibitors to treat lipid disorders, direct oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention and angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitors for heart failure treatment. Those three categories of drugs were commonly pinpointed as being “always” or “often” denied by insurance companies in surveys of providers.

On Aug. 9, the FDA expanded its list of valsartan products currently under recall to include other items that contain the active ingredient, which may be tainted with a carcinogenic impurity, manufactured by Hetero Labs Limited in India.

CMS proposed on Aug. 9 an overhaul to accountable care organizations (ACOs), which would require ACOs to more quickly assume financial risk. But critics predict the changes will cause a mass exodus from the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Joseph James Pappas, the accused gunman in the shooting of former president George H.W. Bush’s cardiologist Mark Hausknecht, MD, shot himself in the head after being confronted by law enforcement officers who were attempting to arrest him in Houston. He was formally charged with the murder of Hausknecht on Thursday, August 2.

Healthcare advocacy groups expressed concern with the Trump administration’s final rule on short-term insurance plans, saying the decision to extend those limited plans for up to three years could destabilize other insurance markets and leave patients covered by such plans exposed to catastrophic costs.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2.3 percent medical device tax that was implemented as part of the Affordable Care Act. The House voted 283 to 132, with 57 Democrats joining Republicans.