A look at three different approaches that seek to address social needs in a strategic and somewhat comprehensive way. At this point, all of them are experiments, and no one knows which will prove to be sustainable, replicable, or even beneficial to the patients and communities they seek to serve.
Hemlibra demonstrates how far antibody science has progressed. Genentech’s drug, approved late last year, connects two clotting factors to prevent the devastating bleeds in hemophilia patients with inhibitors. The high price may be offset by avoided costs in patients with factor VIII inhibitors.
Providers and payers are being asked to tackle the ‘upstream’ causes of poor health. Medicaid managed care organizations are being asked to screen enrollees for social needs. Some targeted efforts have translated into cost savings and make sense in value-based arrangements. But are we asking the health sector to take on too much?
The rate of developmental disabilities for children ages 3 to 17 in the United States rose from 5.76% in 2014 to 6.99% in 2016, according to the CDC. The prevalence of children who had been diagnosed with a developmental delay other than autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability also increased from 3.57% to 4.55%.
Elisabeth Rosenthal has a unique perspective on what ails the American health care system. She is a physician turned journalist who has some firsthand knowledge about what takes place in American hospitals and doctor’s offices, although her Wikipedia entry makes a point of describing her as a “non-practicing physician.”
Physicians and their charges have different ideas about what makes for good cancer care. Patient surveys help, but they need to be handled right.
When it comes to heart attacks, additional health care spending was only weakly associated with lower case-fatality rates, according to a study of Medicare patients. What did make a difference to researchers was coronary angioplasty on the first day of heart attack patients’ hospitalizations.
Nonquantitative treatment limitations may be why care for mental health and substance abuse disorders isn’t keeping up with coverage gains.
The questions: Should CMS increase pay to PCPs for services that they currently provide but are not compensated for, and pay for new services that CMS would like PCPs to perform? Or should CMS pay for demonstration projects that target high-need, high-cost Medicare beneficiaries? CMS’s answer, at least for the time being, is a bit of both.
The plaintiffs are now defendants and vice versa in the drawn-out dispute over ACA birth control coverage.
Deaths of women from opioid addiction spiked 400%, according to CDC data. Alison Colbert of Duquesne University argues for a gender-specific approach.
For Americans younger than 65, the share of people with private health insurance in a high-deductible plan increased from 39.4% in 2016 to 42.9% in 2017.
The overall infant mortality rate in the U.S. declined 14% between 2005 and 2015, from 6.86 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005 to 5.90 in 2015, according to the CDC. However, CDC researchers found wide variation among the states, ranging from 9.08 deaths per 1,000 live births in Mississippi (the highest rate), to 4.28 deaths per 1,000 live births in Massachusetts (the lowest).
