Laura Joszt, MA

Laura Joszt headshot

Laura Joszt, MA, is the content director for The American Journal of Managed Care®. She has been with MJH Life Sciences since 2011.

Laura has an MA in business and economic reporting from New York University. You can connect with Laura on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Articles by Laura Joszt, MA

The United States healthcare system has to start spending less time fixing people and more time and money on reducing the need to fix them by getting to people earlier, according to panelists who participated in the Brookings Institution’s event “New Directions for Communities: How They Can Boost Neighborhood Health.”

The Senate has confirmed Scott Gottlieb, MD, for the position of FDA Commissioner. Gottlieb faced some criticism from Democrats for his close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, but he promised to recuse himself from any FDA decisions relating to some 20 companies and institutions for 1 year.

A day after House Republicans voted to pass legislation that repeals and replaces large parts of the Affordable Care Act, Avik Roy, Forbes opinion editor and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, outlined what Republicans are trying to fix. After his presentation, he joined a panel discussion on what impact the American Health Care Act will have.

Considering people spend two-thirds of their lives where they live, the quality of housing and the state of their neighborhood can play a large role in well-being and cause poor health. A new report from Urban Institute took a look at the impact of blighted properties and policy and program recommendations that can help communities make housing and neighborhoods healthier.

Following a partisan battle and a year of contention following the death of Anton Scalia, the Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States. With nearly all Democrats voting against confirmation, the Senate voted along party lines to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations so Gorsuch could be confirmed with only 54 senators supporting him.

The patient voice is becoming more important as healthcare moves to a value-based, patient-centered system of care, but just amplifying the patient voice is not enough. There needs to not only be amplification, but also a constructive response from the health system, said Thomas Lee, MD, chief medical officer at Press Ganey, during his presentation at the National Quality Forum Annual Conference.

In a session covering the future of the business of healthcare in the United States, Kevin Grabenstatter, managing director for L.E.K. Consulting, asserted that healthcare is an unsustainably big business, which means that change is coming.

The move away from fee-for-service has driven some health plans to embrace value-based care contracts and accountable care organizations. During a session at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Annual Meeting, held March 27-30, 2017, in Denver, Colorado, panelists outlined how the marketplace has evolved.

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Annual Meeting kicked off on March 28, 2017, in Denver, Colorado, with a look at the specialty pharmaceutical pipeline with Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, senior clinical consultant for emerging therapeutics at Express Scripts.

The majority of costs associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are associated with hospitalizations, and a new study in the International Journal of COPD set out to determine the exact drivers of high costs among hospitalized patients with COPD.