Where masking mandates are coming back
A surge in respiratory illnesses including RSV, the flu, and COVID-19 has prompted a number of health-care systems and facilities across the country to revive masking policies. Axios reports with some two million Americans getting infected daily with COVID—making the current wave associated with the JN.1 variant the second biggest of the pandemic after omicron emerged—health-care facilities in New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts have made masks mandatory among patients and providers. Becker’s also listed 28-plus hospitals and health systems currently known to be bringing back mask mandates.
“Hygiene is no longer as profitable as it once was for a practice”
Becker’s interviewed a New Jersey dentist who offered a perspective on what he sees as a long-term issue within the dental industry: “The most difficult thing at the moment is staffing. The big area right now in my office is hygiene,” said Dr. Edward Fiens, who’s been practicing for 33 years. “It's a struggle to staff a busy practice…Hygiene is no longer as profitable as it once was for a practice. Simply put, higher pay, less availability and fewer patients are now evolving as a loss leader for dental practices.”
Follow-up on tongue-tie surgery’s benefits, risks
Following a New York Times article on the benefits and risks of frenotomies—more commonly known as tongue-tie surgeries—on infants, economist Emily Oster wrote a follow-up piece on her Parent Data website “to review both the evidence on benefits and what we know about risk,” noting that an uptick in the procedure over time "may reflect overuse of the procedure or it could reflect an evidence-based change in our understanding of its value."
VideaHealth secures FDA clearance for AI applications
The dental AI platform VideaHealth recently received 501(k) clearance from the FDA for Videa Dental Assist, which, according to a company press release, “includes more than 30 AI algorithms and expands AI detections to cover all of the most common dental diseases.” The clearance applications include periapical radiolucencies, calculus, pediatric caries detection for ages three years and older, and more, many of which are the “first of their kind to be issued by a regulatory agency anywhere in the world, including the first pediatric radiology AI clearance in dentistry,” according to VideaHealth.
