Allison Inserro

In the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Florida high school last week that killed 17 students and adults, 6 medical organizations are calling on President Trump and Congress to treat gun violence as a national public health epidemic amid a press report that attitudes are loosening on Capitol Hill about putting more research money into the issue.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) recently asked CMS to delay the application deadline for its new bundled payment model by about a month so that additional programmatic information can be communicated to healthcare providers, systems, and clinicians. The AHA asked for the new information to be released by March 1 and for the program’s application deadline to be delayed from March 12 to April 16.

How can prescribers and other clinicians collaborate in order to help improve adherence to treatment to manage attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? And what keeps patients and their families from adhering to medication?

Anthem said that it was adjusting its policy on paying for emergency department (ED) visits, but some advocates and healthcare associations said Friday the changes by the insurer don’t go far enough. In addition, lawmakers in the Missouri House and Senate will consider legislation that would require a board-certified emergency physician to review the patient’s medical history regarding the ED visit before sending a bill, according to a published report.

Get your flu shot, administration officials warned Wednesday–this year’s flu season is on track to reach or exceed the number of deaths, hospitalizations and infections seen in other bad influenza years. And new data shows more precisely the effectiveness of the vaccine, especially for children, a high-risk group.

Colorado, Washington, and Connecticut have joined California in investigating Aetna, CNN reported Wednesday, after a former medical director for the insurer admitted in a deposition that he never looked at patients' complete medical records when deciding whether to approve or deny care.

The results of a new survey, published in a recent white paper by HealthCare Executive Group and Change Healthcare, showed that a majority of executives are increasingly adopting social determinants of health into their programs.

The FDA on Wednesday cleared the sale of the first blood test to evaluate concussion in adults. The agency said a blood test could help avoid unnecessary computed tomography scans of the head, because most patients evaluated for concussion do not have detectable intracranial lesions.

Driven by an aging US population and other economic and demographic factors, national health spending is projected to climb to 19.7% of the economy over the next 8 years, up from 17.9% in 2016, according to new estimates released Wednesday from CMS and published online in Health Affairs.

Sickle cell disease (SCD), the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States, is marked by episodes of acute pain, but there is increasing recognition that it can transition to chronic persistent SCD pain. A recent study found that the presence of pain on 3 or more days a week is independently associated with worse patient-reported pain interference and anxiety.

The prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) identified in an outpatient sample of 492 adults seeking mental health treatment was nearly 10 times higher than the prevalence identified in epidemiological studies, according to a poster presented at the recent 2018 Annual Meeting of The American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders.

A new report from the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement finds that the considerable differences among the total cost of healthcare in 5 states were mostly caused by local patterns of healthcare usage and pricing. The report, Healthcare Affordability: Untangling Cost Drivers, looks at the average cost of healthcare for comparable populations as its benchmark and compares each state with that average.

Born as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the controversial Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was eliminated last week as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 without ever having been implemented. The IPAB sought to reign in Medicare spending if targets went over certain levels, but it had almost universal opposition from the healthcare and medical communities.

Researchers have used super-resolution microscopy to unveil the geodesic mesh that supports the outer membrane of a red blood cell, in a discovery that could eventually help uncover how the malaria parasite hijacks this mesh when it invades and eventually destroys red blood cells. The work was published in the latest issue of Cell Reports.

In a given year, lower back pain affects between one-third and two-thirds of older adults. A new study sought to determine if such pain in well-functioning older adults spurs declines in mobility. Results were mixed but the issue deserves further research, the authors reported.

Awareness of blockchain technology among healthcare executives has risen over the past year, especially over the past several months, according to a webinar hosted by Healthcare Research & Analytics® (HRA), a market research firm. However, since the technology is still in its infancy stages, that interest has not translated into widespread adoption, according to the presenters.

Five novel genetic variants associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been identified by exploiting genetic overlap between ADHD and educational attainment. The discovery was hailed as an important milestone in the field of genetics and underscores the continuing need for therapeutic interventions for children with ADHD in the school setting.

Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, made a surprise visit to AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference Tuesday morning and took to the podium to declare that he wants to be the first surgeon general to issue a report showing the links between health and a healthy economy.

As the federal government faces another potential shutdown at the end of the week, a panel of former Congressional staffers shared their perspectives at AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference about lessons learned on Capitol Hill.

We have been living in a groundhog world for the past several decades when it comes to healthcare spending, said Robert Dubois of the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) during AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference, in Washington, DC. The session called When Are We Going to Get Serious About Health Care Spending in the United States? came a few days after the NPC launched an effort to have a dialogue around this issue by issuing a call for research around the topic and partnering with Health Affairs on a campaign called Going Below the Surface.

Are Medicaid waivers meant to encourage able-bodied adults to work, or a return to poor laws of old? Or are they a means to get states that have not expanded Medicaid to expand? A diversity of viewpoints on these and other topics were on full display during Health Reform X.O: What Now, What Next?, the first session of AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference.

A study in Canada of nearly 4000 patients with chronic pain found that one-third reported coexisting chronic pain conditions, but no specific patterns of co-occurrence of pain comorbidity were identified. The study was conducted to add more to the body of knowledge about what is known about chronic pain, which is experienced by up to 20% of the population.

Indiana became the second state in the country to receive approval to implement work requirements for people receiving Medicaid.

House GOP leaders are reportedly looking at a 2-month stopgap measure to keep the government open past next week in a deal that would fund community health centers, which serve 27 million Americans, for 2 years. Without a deal with Democrats, the government shuts down February 8.

For patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), getting and staying organized and maintaining focus on the right things at the right time is a challenge. Some solutions are touted at the start of every year in the form of “getting organized” with the latest planners, smartphones as well as smart home devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.

Final updated results of the pivotal phase 2 study that led to last year’s FDA approval of the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, resigned Wednesday, one day after reports that she traded tobacco stocks while heading the agency.

Will healthcare become the ultimate employee discount for US workers of Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway? Or something bigger for all Americans? The 3 disparate companies announced they will form a separate, independent company “free from profit-making incentives and constraints” to tackle the vexing problem of rising healthcare costs for employees and their families.

For many people on traditional Medicare plans, healthcare costs are a rising burden and are expected to consume a larger share of total income by 2030, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Even though much more remains to be done on an island where half of its US residents still lack power, the situation is improving for cancer patients in Puerto Rico, doctors and organizations said recently in interviews with The American Journal of Managed Care®. In Puerto Rico, more than 75% of the cancer care is delivered in the community, not hospitals.