ACA Insurance Premiums Set to Spike in Some States
August 27th 2015Fears of health insurance premium hikes during the third year of the Affordable Care Act may not be unfounded. In Tennessee, the state's insurance commissioner just approved BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee's 36.3% increase.
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Use of Telemedicine to Care for Older Veterans With Depression
August 2nd 2015Telemedicine could increase access to best-practice care for older adults with major depression who are facing barriers of mobility, stigma, and geographical isolation, and a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry compared treatment response delivered via telemedicine with same-room care.
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Seniors Receive Less Consults But More Medication for Mental Health Disorders
July 31st 2015The study found that the geriatric population in the United States receives prescriptions for mental health drugs at more than twice the rate that younger adults do, but they present a lower rate of seeking psychiatric care.
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Enrolling Consumers Not Enough-They Need to Be Engaged, Too
July 29th 2015Increasing health insurance enrollment is only one part of the goal of the Affordable Care Act-the law also aims to improve population health and lower healthcare costs, but less attention has been paid to these critical steps.
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Training Linked to Costly Brand Name Prescribing
July 26th 2015There is a link between low-value prescribing and graduate medical training, according to a study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
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Need for Palliative Care for Improved Performance at the End of Life
July 23rd 2015A study in JAMA Oncology has found that chemotherapy for patients with end-stage cancer was associated with worse quality of life near death while they still retained their ability to perform many life functions.
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New ICER Program Analyzes Budget Impact of New Drugs
July 22nd 2015A new program from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review will produce public reports that include a full analysis of the comparative effectiveness, the cost-effectiveness, and the potential budget impact of new drugs.
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ASCO Calls for Developing Oncology Trials for Geriatric Patients
July 20th 2015The American Society of Clinical Oncology has issued a position statement in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, calling for federal agencies and the cancer research community to broaden clinical trials to include older adults.
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CMS Testing Concurrent Coverage of Palliative, Curative Care
July 20th 2015Instead of making patients suffering from life-limiting illnesses choose between hospice care and curative care, CMS will test coverage that allows individuals to receive palliative and curative treatment concurrently.
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