Dive Brief:
Since taking office, Trump has attempted to limit access to publicly available healthcare data and cut federal funding for medical research.
As of Tuesday afternoon, both policies were temporarily blocked by federal judges. The decisions will restore certain data to federal websites maintained by the HHS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration and temporarily pause funding cuts from going into effect.
Providers may be feeling a bit of whiplash. “Unfortunately, the only constant right now is uncertainty. Our members’ number one priority is preserving their patients’ access to care, and recent policy changes have caused immediate and long-term impacts to that access,” Bea Grause, president of Healthcare Association of New York State, told Healthcare Dive over email.
Dive Insight:
U.S. District Judge John Bates ordered the administration to immediately restore certain public health information following a lawsuit brought by Doctors for America. The providers argued the purge of information had included vital resources, including information about monitoring and measuring youth mental health and preventing the spread of HIV.
The judge wrote the policy harmed everyday Americans’ access to healthcare.
“If those doctors cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions,” Bates wrote.
The order referenced specific harms to providers. The plaintiffs said already doctors had faced challenges doing their jobs, including one physician who could not access CDC resources for addressing a chlamydia outbreak.
“These doctors’ time and effort are valuable, scarce resources, and being forced to spend them elsewhere makes their jobs harder and their treatment less effective,” Bates wrote.
However, the ruling was limited to restoring health information on websites cited in the plaintiffs’ complaint, impacting the HHS, CDC and FDA.
Trump also sought to reduce federal spending last week by capping federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health, slashing the rate for reimbursing hospitals for indirect research costs from about 27% to 15%.
Judge Angel Kelley, hearing a trio of lawsuits about Trump’s proposed cuts to NIH funding, said Monday that the policy would cause immediate and irreparable harm to certain providers, and thus should be put on hold.
The judge will hear further arguments about the policy on Feb. 21.
Still, providers may be already acting in the face of possible budget cuts to the NIH. On Monday, Mass General Brigham, one of Massachusetts’ largest health systems, said it would conduct its largest round of layoffs in its history. An expert familiar with the system said the workforce reduction could have been related to worries about a budget shortfall related to reduced research funding.
