Richard Slayman, the first patient to receive a gene-edited kidney transplant from a pig, has passed away, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

• District of Columbia: The Biden administration last week announced $200 million in funding to help mitigate the spread of bird flu. So far, bird flu has been detected in cows in at least nine states, and at least one person in Texas has been infected by the virus. According to CDC, the general risk to public health is low, but the government and scientists are watching for any changes in the virus. Under the new funding plan, the federal government will provide dairy farms with up to $28,000 to take protective measures and to compensate them for any losses. The funding will also be used to support federal efforts in testing, monitoring, and preventing the virus from spreading farther. "If we institute the countermeasures now, and reduce the spread of the virus ... we're much less likely to see a mutation that jumps to humans for which we're ill-prepared," said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. (Daher, Axios, 5/10; Frieden, MedPage Today, 5/10)
• Maryland: CMS last week issued a memo to state officials extending federal regulatory waivers and flexibilities for Medicaid and CHIP until June 2025, a year after they were originally set to expire. "Due to state adoption of strategies to prevent inappropriate disenrollments and other CMS-approved unwinding-related strategies, many states will continue conducting unwinding-related renewals beyond June 2024," said Dan Tsai, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. Eligibility redeterminations for Medicaid and CHIP began again in April 2023 after pandemic-era policies expired. Although CMS offered states several different tools to help them preserve coverage for qualified individuals, almost 22 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid and CHIP, with 69% losing coverage for procedural reasons. "Many of the strategies adopted by states during their unwinding period will continue to be needed to protect beneficiaries while the states implement policy, systems and operational fixes to address areas of noncompliance with federal renewal requirements that were identified during unwinding," Tsai said. (Tepper, Modern Healthcare, 5/10)
• Massachusetts: Richard Slayman, the first patient to receive a gene-edited kidney transplant from a pig, passed away around two months after his original surgery. Slayman, who had end-stage kidney disease, received the pig kidney in March and was discharged from the hospital two weeks later. According to Slayman, he saw the surgery "not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive." Around two months after his surgery, Slayman passed away. In a statement, Massachusetts General Hospital, where Slayman received the kidney, said the transplant team was "deeply saddened" by his death and that it had "no indication that [his death] was the result of his recent transplant." eGenesis, the company that developed the pig kidney used in the transplant, also released a statement after Slayman's death calling him a "true pioneer" and saying that "[h]is courage has helped forge a path forward for current and future patients suffering from kidney failure." (Hughes, New York Times, 5/12; Stoico, The Boston Globe/STAT+ [subscription required], 5/12)