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A study of the use of patient portals among older Americans found clear disparities in the registration and use of this technology. The results were published in the Journal of the Americans Medical Informatics Association.

A review of 24 trials covering more than 10,000 patients confirmed earlier findings that PCSK9 inhibitors dramatically reduce cholesterol and risk of heart attacks. But an editorial that appeared alongside the meta-analysis in Annals of Internal Medicine said long-term studies are needed on this new drug class.

A study published in the journal Health Servcies Research found that veterans enrolled in dual programs, the VA care program and a Medicare Advantage plan, did not perform better or worse than those using the VA alone. This is important considering the duplicate spending associated with dual enrollment.

In a new survey, more than half of self-identified Republicans said they didn't think the Affordable Care Act is increasing the number of people with health insurance, with a fifth of respondents saying it has actually reduced the number of people with coverage.

Published early online in Cancer, the findings suggest that the expansion of coverage through the Affordable Care Act may disproportionally benefit certain patient populations.

Nearly 40% of healthcare providers treating Medicare patients will have their payments docked 1.5% this year because they didn't submit data on patients' health to the government, CMS said.

Enlisting electronic health record (EHR) super users to provide support to employees is not enough to foster EHR implementation success-super users' behaviors can be an important influence, researchers from Yale University found.

The accelerated review, the results of which were made public 2 days prior to a vote by an FDA advisory panel on using T-Vec in melaonma, cited concerns over the design and results of a key study with the viral drug.

More pharmaceutical companies are buying drugs that they see as undervalued, then raising the prices. It is one of a number of industry tactics, driving up the cost of drugs.

Medicaid managed care is expanding throughout the United States. Iowa is going through a request-for-proposal process, and Kentucky is rebidding its contracts after switching over to managed care in 2011.

A treatment approved for the most common form of hepatitis C in the US was also highly effective in less widespread variants, researchers reported at the European Association for the Study of the Liver annual meeting.

The study found that despite an increase in the armamentarium of drugs to treat multiple sclerosis, the cost of the drugs has skyrocketed and not dropped.

While brachytherapy improved progression-free survival in men with prostate cancer, compared with traditional readiotherapy, the study found that overall survival was not very different between the 2 groups.

The use of a tiered network was associated with the increased use of hospitals on the preferred and middle tiers for planned hospital admissions compared with the nonpreferred tier, according to a paper in Health Services Research.

The federal government's review of how much money it spends to help pay for the hospital costs of low-income people in Tennessee and other states that didn't expand Medicaid feels like a threat to Governor Bill Haslam.

Remote monitoring for heart failure patients resulted in fewer hospitalizations and deaths than a similar group of patients receiving usual care during a 4-month study, but the benefits didn't last beyond the study period.

Satisfaction with the Health Insurance Marketplace exchange enrollment process among new enrollees has significantly increased from 2014.

Patients with multiple long-term health conditions are more likely to report poorer experiences in primary care than those with fewer health problems, according to recent findings by researchers from the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe.

States increasingly use managed care for Medicaid enrollees, yet evidence of its impact on healthcare outcomes is mixed. This research studies county-level Medicaid managed care penetration and healthcare outcomes among nonelderly disabled and nondisabled enrollees.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office found that CMS could use electronically readable cards in Medicare for a number of different purposes.

A one-minute look at managed care news during the week of April 20, 2015, including the how payment reform could hurt emergency care and Americans want the government to do something about high drug prices.

Researchers from the University of Washington examined drinking patterns down to the county level, and found wide disparities within state borders. This suggests that solutions to problem drinking must be found locally.

The survey, conducted at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and published in the Annals of Surgery, found that half of women with cancer in 1 breast are interested in removing their healthy breast to avoid a second cancer.

Nearly all doctors reported barriers to conducting effective end-of-life conversations with patients, and most felt that it was especially difficult to discuss with patients of a different ethnicity, according to researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine.

For all their talk about evidence-based medicine, a lot of doctors don't follow the clinical guidelines set by leading medical groups.

CMS wasted nearly $251 million in taxpayer dollars on infusion drugs in just 18 months by using outdated drug pricing estimates, which drove up the cost of prescription injectable drugs for an aging baby boomer population.

Avalere, partnering with the National Comprehensive Care Network, surveyed 20 cancer centers and found that 75% of respondents were covered by at least "some" of the exchange plans in their state.

Pharmaceutical companies can expect accelerated drug development by using alternate endpoints instead of the gold standard of OS and PFS for oncology molecules.

The monoclonal antibody MPDL3280A, a PD-L1 inhibitor being developed by Genentech, generated pharmacodynamic responses as measured by circulating biomarkers in phase 1a studies in patients with triple negative breast cancer.

Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, who took office as US Surgeon General in December and has a ceremonial swearing-in Thursday, says he hopes to reduce chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease by promoting physical activity.