 Kelsie Whitmore uses red light therapy in her locker room at Richmond County Bank Ball Park in September 2022 in Staten Island, N.Y. Photo: Al Bello/Getty ImagesRed light is one type of light that doctors aren’t shielding us from.Why it matters: It’s a therapy surging in popularity, especially for the treatment of wrinkles and acne. Red light therapy has also shown promise in a variety of other areas, including wound healing, pain management and cancer care, Axios’ Ashley May reports. Doctors say it’s generally safe to use.“It can be used across a variety of skin types, even in the most sensitive individuals,” says dermatologist Joshua Zeichner of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.Yes, but: Amit Om, a dermatologist in Charlotte, North Carolina, told Axios that he doesn’t recommend the therapy to anyone with photosensitizing conditions, like lupus. People with melasma also might not benefit.How it works: LED light directed at the skin triggers a process called photobiomodulation, a noninvasive way to stimulate certain cells that rejuvenate skin.That’s what stimulates collagen to reduce wrinkles and scarring. Fun fact: NASA was a red light therapy pioneer.Reality check: While red light can improve the appearance of skin, “it’s not powerful enough to replace anything that we currently have,” Om told Axios.In other words, red light can plump aging skin, but don’t expect Botox-like results. In most cases, a doctor recommends red light therapy to complement other treatment options. Another caveat: Devices you buy for home use won’t give you the same results as an in-office laser treatment, Samantha Karlin with the American Academy of Dermatology told Axios.At-home red light devices require use at least several times a week or daily.What’s next: Red light therapy will likely shine brighter in 2025.Praveen Arany, who has been studying how light can help heal wounds, predicts we’ll see more red light uses for post-surgical healing, more athletes using it to improve performance, and more at-home devices in various forms like helmets and panels.“It is a fantastic new type of treatment,” but do your research before buying in, Arany cautions. “The marketing is all over the place.” Immigration curbs threaten caregivingBy Tina Reed  Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios Some of the earliest and lasting effects from President-elect Trump’s promised immigration crackdowns would be in home health and long-term care, both of which rely on a substantial number of foreign-born and undocumented workers.Why it matters: Reducing an already thin labor market could have serious ramifications for aging adults or those with disabilities — and potentially put more stress on family caregivers.What they’re saying: “Immigration policy is long-term care policy,” said David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School professor who’s chronicled how foreign-born workers filled key nursing home roles early in the pandemic.He found nursing homes in regions with a higher share of foreign-born nursing assistants provided more direct care and better quality.”If you were to tighten up immigration or begin deporting individuals, it’s going to lower the available workforce, and this is only going to add to an already challenging labor situation,” he said.By the numbers: Between 2021 and 2031, the long-term care sector will need to fill 9.3 million direct care job openings as demand grows and workers exit the field, according to PHI, a research group that studies care workers.The American Immigration Council estimates more than a third of home health aids in the U.S. are immigrants. In states like California, New York and New Jersey, it’s estimated at least 40% of the caregiving workforce is foreign-born.Trump’s proposals call for mass deportations of undocumented workers and would also curb legal immigration and limit asylum.Undocumented workers accounted for an estimated 6.9% of home health aides and 4.4% of personal care aides, according to the American Immigration Council.Go deeperHow hospitals profited big from “upcoding”By Maya Goldman  Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios Hospitals received billions of dollars in extra payments from insurers and government programs over a nine-year period by billing for higher-intensity care than what would be expected, according to a new study.Why it matters: The findings argue for reconfiguring hospital payments that now are based on diagnosis and encourage organizations to game the system, according to the RAND study published in Health Affairs.Catch up quick: Medicare pays hospitals for patient stays based on the main diagnosis that brought a person into the hospital. Many private health insurance payers have adopted similar payment systems.Medicare’s current system, in place since 2007, gives hospitals higher payments for more patients with more complications and co-existing conditions. That gives hospitals an incentive to document patient cases at the highest level of complexity — a practice referred to as “upcoding.”What they found: Hospital discharge documentation shows that patients needing the highest-intensity level of care increased by 41% between 2011 and 2019, the study found.But researchers estimated that figure should have increased by 13% over the time period.An increase in upcoding led to $14.6 billion in hospital payments in 2019, relative to 2011 coding practices, the study said. That included $5.8 billion from private health plans, $4.6 billion from Medicare and $1.8 billion from Medicaid.Read more FDA streamlines approval of AI-powered devicesBy Maya Goldman  Illustration: Tiffany Herring/Axios The FDA on Tuesday finalized recommendations aimed at simplifying the process for approving medical devices that use artificial intelligence.Why it matters: Regulators increasingly are evaluating wearables and other AI-powered medical devices.Artificial intelligence and machine learning has the potential to improve health care by ingesting real-world data and adapting it to new circumstances in real time.But ensuring that AI-powered medical devices remain safe and effective is burdensome for both the FDA and manufacturers.”This guidance is intended to provide a forward-thinking approach to promote the development of safe and effective AI-enabled devices,” the FDA memo says.Zoom in: The first-time guidelines outline that manufacturers can seek approval to make changes to their AI-enabled products without having to file a new submission to show the device is safe and effective.The plan is submitted to the FDA along with a marketing approval application that outlines modifications that will be made and how those changes will be assessed.Reality check: The guidelines are recommendations, not legally enforceable requirements.Read morefrom STAT:multimediaWhy is health care cybersecurity so bad?Hyacinth Empinado/STAT Part of the problem right now is that health care data privacy laws are better at keeping a corpse’s health information private than keeping patients alive, experts told STAT’s Brittany Trang earlier this year. Health savings accounts, pharmacies, and major hospitals have all been attacked in 2024. But a single data breach accounted for the vast majority of people’s data being exposed: Change Healthcare.Watch the video explainer from Brittany (with amazing production and animation from STAT’s Hyacinth Empinado) on why health care cybersecurity is so bad — and what the government and health care industry are doing to fix it.glp-1 drugsZepbound beat Wegovy head to head for weight lossEli Lilly’s drug Zepbound resulted in weight loss that was 47% greater than the weight loss achieved with Wegovy, the rival medicine made by Novo Nordisk, according to a new head-to-head study out this morning. The news likely will not be entirely surprising to the physicians and scientists who closely watch this space: Similar results have been seen when the same drugs — that is, tirzepatide and semaglutide, respectively — are used to treat diabetes.In the 751-volunteer trial, volunteers receiving Zepbound lost 20.2% of their body weight on average after 72 weeks, compared to 13.7% in those treated with Wegovy. This translated into a 50.3 lbs in the tirzepatide group and 33.1 lbs in the semaglutide group. Read more. |
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