Health Care Delivery

Data released in the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicate that patients with end-stage kidney disease on hemodialysis who are Black, Hispanic/Latino, or of lower socioeconomic status (SES) are at greater risk of Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections, with Hispanic/Latino ethnicity cited as an independent risk factor.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Tom Stanis, CEO and cofounder of Story Health, and Phillip Wood, Intermountain Ventures program director, on how their partnership came about, how it is going so far, and the future of their collaboration.

Drug costs, particularly for immunotherapies, contributed to the rising cost of care during the last 6 months of life for a fee-for-service Medicare beneficiary, according to a recent study.

Even patients with the mildest symptoms of myasthenia gravis said they experienced negative quality-of-life (QOL) effects from the disease.

The modified Atkins diet exhibited superior tolerability and effectiveness in reducing seizure frequency compared with other dietary therapies in the management of childhood drug-resistant epilepsy.

Telemonitoring may help improve continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy adherence for patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA), while motivational enhancement therapy (MET) most significantly impacted long-term adherence, according to a recent study.

In this column, a health insurance executive discusses 2 ways to address rising inflation, including moving past the traditional fee-for-service payment model.

With greater attention being paid to the heterogenous patient population, researchers questioned whether this has resulted in a more diverse group of patients included in Parkinson disease (PD) studies in the Netherlands.

Vaccination was shown to lower risk of developing severe COVID-19 in both variants, with the largest difference in risk observed in patients aged 40 to 59 years.

A study attempted to see how symptoms affect quality of life after adjusting for confounding factors.

Jeremy Abramson, MD, director of the Jon and Jo Ann Hagler Center for Lymphoma at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, shared his take on the potential benefits of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in earlier lines of treatment.

Five leading academic cancer centers are assessing the feasibility of implementing the Health Equity Report Card pilot project as a tool that can both meaningfully and feasibly measure and report on equitable care practices.

CDC warns against EzriCare Artificial Tears, which were recalled by the manufacturer; certain weight loss drugs not covered by most payers; Mississippi's Republican governor denies being privately in support of Medicaid expansion.

Paul G. Alexander, MD, MPH, executive vice president and chief health equity and transformation officer, RWJBarnabas Health, discusses how community partnerships helped ameliorate disparities in health care access and accessibility, as well as food and travel insecurities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

With atopic dermatitis (AD) prevalence increasing around the world, primarily in developing countries, investigators evaluated the potential for pollution to have an impact on development of the chronic skin condition among an adult population.

Edward Partridge, MD, chief medical officer of Guideway Care, spoke on his organization’s 25-year history in addressing cancer disparities and the crucial role that care navigators/guides have in achieving value-based care within oncology.

A new study aimed to assess the quality and reliability of videos uploaded to YouTube that provide information around spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Health care expert and lived experience panels came to a consensus on several aspects that should be considered in the decision to offer and continue active surveillance for prostate cancer.

With the public health emergency soon coming to an end, people covered by Medicaid will encounter new barriers, discusses Dennis Scanlon, PhD, professor of health policy and administration, Penn State University.

Behavioral and combined behavioral and pharmacological interventions were investigated for their potential to help improve sleep outcomes in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Developing a terminology strategy that reflects real-world practice and industry standards can help data scientists and other allied data professionals efficiently and accurately identify clinically relevant insights that help improve the health of populations and individual patients.

In a recent paper, researchers described a new metric called the Parkinson’s Disease Social Functioning Scale (PDSFS) that aims to measure social functioning in patients with this disease.

Terrance Mayes, EdD, and Loretta Erhunmwunsee, MD, FACS, discuss their new roles as chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) new Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Directors Forum.

The government is allowing Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to delay returning hundreds of millions of dollars or more in government overpayments; a proposed new extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) might make birth control coverage more accessible for certain private insurance plans; a study found that students lost around 33% of their school year because of the pandemic’s educational barriers and are struggling to regain that lost time.

The Biden administration has said it would give 60 days notice before ending the public health emergency, which was set to end April 11, and the national emergency was set to end March 1.