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What We're Reading: Improving Patient Access to Medical Records
What we're reading, January 19, 2016: the Obama administration is looking to make it easier for patients to access their medical records; a clinical trial has left 1 brain dead and 4 hospitalized; and hospitals are experimenting with mobile technologies to track patient health at home.
New guidelines from the Obama administration would make it easier for patients to gain access to their own medical records. The New York Times reported that under the new guidelines, doctors and hospitals will no longer be able to require patients state a reason for requesting their records and cannot deny access to medical records because of concern a patient might be upset by the information enclosed. In addition, while they can charge a fee to cover the cost of copying, doctors and hospitals cannot charge patients the cost of searching for and retrieving data.
A clinical trial for a new drug from Portuguese pharmaceutical company Bial has led to the hospitalization of 5 participants. The drug, which was aimed at treating anxiety or problems linked to degenerative diseases, left one man brain dead, while the other 4 suffered neurological disorders, reported The Wall Street Journal. Investigators will examine if there were missteps in how the drug was developed.
A growing number of hospitals are using mobile technologies to track patients’ health when they are at home. According to STAT, hospitals are looking to use the data being tracked by smartphones: step counts, diets, sleep patterns, etc. However, critics warn that while this technology could reduce doctor’s visits, it shouldn’t replace them.
Standard Criteria for Loss of Ambulation Needed in DMD
April 19th 2024A recent study suggests the differences between ambulation definitions for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) can impact the identification of ambulant vs nonambulant individuals, and standard criteria across settings are needed.
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Navigating Health Literacy, Social Determinants, and Discrimination in National Health Plans
February 13th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the February 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on how health plans can screen for health literacy, social determinants of health, and perceived health care discrimination.
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Early Involvement Critical in Treating Immunotherapy-Induced Overlap Syndrome
April 19th 2024A series of case studies reveals the importance of early diagnosis and involvement of special teams of clinicians when dealing with potential cases of overlap syndrome, which encompasses myocarditis, myasthenia gravis, and immune checkpoint inhibitor–related myositis.
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Drs Raymond Thertulien, Joseph Mikhael on Racial Disparities in Multiple Myeloma Care Access
December 28th 2023In the wake of the 2023 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, Raymond Thertulien, MD, PhD, of Novant Health, and Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, FRCPC, FACP, chief medical officer of the International Myeloma Foundation, discussed health equity research highlights from the meeting and drivers of racial disparities in multiple myeloma outcomes.
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Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
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