Providers

Facing the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the US medical community has been forced to rapidly change and modernize the manner in which it delivers health care over the last year-and-a-half. 

Key opinion leaders discuss the state of mental health in the US workforce, persistent unmet needs, and efforts to improve coverage and uptake of behavioral health services.

Although the pandemic continued to rule health care headlines, a few other stories were noteworthy in 2021 for the AJMC.com audience, including articles about a wider indication for the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist semaglutide and the heart failure drug Entresto.

This year’s most-read articles on pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) covered a range of topics, including nutrition, therapy switches, and patient education to improve treatment adherence. Improving patient outcomes is something they all had in common.

Childhood psoriasis was found to be significantly associated with environmental tobacco smoke exposure, whereas intrauterine smoking exposure was not associated with an increased risk in pediatric populations.

David R. Stukus, MD, FACAAI, of Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and a board member of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, speaks on the difficulties of gaining coverage for newer biologic therapies in the treatment of atopic dermatitis.

Two posters presented at The Liver Meeting evaluated nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)–associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) to understand the burden and identify the risk for developing HCC.

This year the United States only approved 2 biosimilars, but the FDA did grant interchangeable status to the first biosimilar.

People experiencing teeth grinding or clenching during sleep, called sleep bruxism, were found to be more likely than the general population to report incidence of other sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome.

Anne Barmettler, MD, an associate professor of ophthalmology, visual sciences, and plastic surgery at Montefiore Medical Center, discusses the cost of teprotumumab for thyroid eye disease.

The top 5 most-read psoriasis articles of 2021 on AJMC.com covered risk factors involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of psoriatic disease and cost considerations for treatment.

Physicians said it is in payers’ interest to use artificial intelligence to address social determinants of health, to cover tests, and to gather data. Doing so could let them stratify who needs certain screenings and diagnostic procedures and who doesn’t, which could lead to less consumption of health care.

Jeffrey Patton, MD, is the CEO of OneOncology, a national partnership of independent community oncologists based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also executive chairman of the board, Tennessee Oncology, and a member of the board, Community Oncology Alliance.

Vertical integration of payers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) took flight with the mergers of Aetna and CVS Health and of Cigna and ExpressScripts. Panelists at Patient-Centered Oncology Care® said the shift has filtered down to affect access at the practice level.

Duncan Allen, MHA, introduced the audience to the OneR clinical research initiative, and Jeffrey Patton, MD, discussed how the hospital transparency law has bolstered the case for the value of community oncology.

Elizabeth Kwo, MD, MBA, MPH, is the deputy chief clinical officer, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston, Massachusetts. Kwo is a faculty lecturer at Harvard Medical School and physician entrepreneur.

Bruce A. Feinberg, DO, of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions, leads a panel discussion on how far randomized clinical trials have come, how they could be better, and how using real-world evidence could make research more representative of the population.

Under the expanded FDA label, up to 1.8 million individuals in the United States could be eligible for sacubitril/valsartan, and up to 180,000 worsening heart failure (HF) events could be prevented or postponed.

A case series of patients with pustular psoriasis indicated a lack of standardized treatment and continued health care utilization, in which men were at greater risk of an emergency department or hospital encounter.

In a study published in our December issue, researchers analyzed how prescribing of the newly approved heart failure drug sacubitril/valsartan diffused across the nation.

Final results from the MASTER trial presented at this year’s 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition bear out the benefits of quadruplet therapy and using minimal residual disease (MRD) status among patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM).

Three policies to revamp insurance consumer protections for health care delivery are explored, with highlighted areas for improvement being maternal health coverage and loosening of network adequacy requirements.

Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) exhibited similarly improved insomnia and quality-of-life outcomes when administered hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HNS) vs standard-of-care positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy.

An abstract presented at the 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition shows that although daratumumab use in multiple myeloma holds great promise, challenges remain in the use of clinical pathways for treatment direction with the monoclonal antibody—which the investigators say may also present opportunities for change.