U.S. News & World Report has announced new "refinements" to the methodology of its 2023-2024 "Best Hospitals" rankings ahead of their release next month, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and New York.

•  District of Columbia: HHS on Tuesday proposed a new rule to codify nondiscrimination policies in its programs, services, and funding opportunities. According to Modern Healthcare, the proposed rule would reinstate an Obama-era policy that was removed during the Trump administration as part of a larger debate on the definition of sex discrimination. Under the rule, discrimination based on an individual's gender identity or sexual orientation would be banned. The rule would also protect against discrimination based on age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. These protections would extend to HHS' Head Start program, as well as programs providing assistance to people experiencing homelessness, substance abuse prevention and treatment, community mental health services, and maternal and child health services. (Hartnett, Modern Healthcare, 7/11)
• Massachusetts: Moderna last month submitted an application to FDA for authorization of its updated COVID-19 vaccine for this year's fall vaccination campaign. The latest version of the company's vaccine is designed to target the XBB.1.5 subvariant, which is currently the dominant strain in the United States. Compared to last year's updated booster, the new shot only targets one COVID-19 variant instead of a new variant and the ancestral coronavirus strain. "The agility of our mRNA platform has enabled us to update Spikevax, Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, to target XBB variants with speed and clinical rigor," said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel. Health authorities are preparing for a fall COVID-19 vaccine campaign, similar to how annual flu shots are administered. However, there is some concern about vaccine uptake since only 17% of the U.S. population has received last year's bivalent booster. (Choi, The Hill, 6/22)
• New York: U.S. News last week announced several new "refinements" to the methodology of its 2023-2024 "Best Hospitals" rankings, which will be released Aug. 1. In total, 18 refinements were made to the methodology, and five others are under consideration for future rankings. Some of the changes to this year's methodology include changes to the health equity category, a greater weight on objective quality measures and less weight on expert opinion, adjustments for COVID-19 volume, and the debut of a new leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma rating. Some of the changes currently under consideration include incorporating social risk into risk adjustment, broader use of outpatient outcomes, and a greater emphasis on patient outcomes. "A key aspect of our journalistic approach is our openness to feedback from diverse stakeholders, including patients, healthcare professionals, and the institutions we evaluate," said Ben Harder, the publication's managing editor and chief of health analysis, and Min Hee Seo, a senior health data scientist at the publication. "Our mission is to serve the best interests of patients and to do so, we, like other reputable journalists, are editorially independent of our employer's business operations. To be clear, we give no consideration to whether a correspondent is affiliated with a hospital or health system that advertises in or maintains other commercial agreements with U.S. News." (Gamble, Becker's Hospital Review, 7/5; Harder/Seo, U.S. News & World Report, 7/3)