The objective of this research was to identify strategies that significantly lower unnecessary inpatient utilization among Medicare beneficiaries with chronic disease.
Patients with diabetes who participate in a pay-for-performance program had higher continuity of care index (COCI) scores, and those with high COCI scores had higher survival rates.
Retail clinic use increased dramatically over 3 years, especially among young, healthy, higher income enrollees living close to retail clinics.
Among near-poor Black and Hispanic individuals, Medicare Advantage was associated with increased vision care and some, although not uniform, reductions in access disparities vs traditional Medicare.
Standardized measurement of migraine, an underdiagnosed and perhaps underrecognized condition, is necessary for health plans to understand utilization of costly diagnostic and treatment services.
“Healthy Steps for Older Adults,” the Pennsylvania Department of Aging’s falls prevention program, resulted in savings of $718 to $840 per person.
Transformative therapies with high up-front costs will exacerbate the need to address gaps between payers when costs and benefits occur at different times.
Among outpatients who were screened for alcohol use, those with unhealthy alcohol use, women, and those who were older, white, and of lower socioeconomic status were more likely to use benzodiazepines.
When a clinical staging algorithm for treatment-resistant depression was applied to administrative claims data, higher scores predicted higher future medical costs.
Patients in practices with central population health coordinators had greater improvement in short-term chronic disease outcome measures compared with patients in practices without central support.
Retrospective chart review to assess the impact of the Diabetes Physician Recognition Program showed that most patients achieved control levels recommended by national treatment guidelines.
Many programs attempting to effectively treat high-need, high-cost individuals have not been able to lower spending, improve outcomes, or increase satisfaction. This paper suggests 8 attributes that many successful programs share.
Medicare Shared Savings Program accountable care organization (ACO) network comprehensiveness is associated with stable patient assignment year to year. Panel stability was significantly associated with improved diabetes and hypertension control in the short term.
This study suggests that lower healthcare resource use and achieving low disease activity are associated with first-line abatacept compared with a first-line tumor necrosis factor-α inhibitor for patients with early rapidly progressive rheumatoid arthritis.
An economic model based on the ECHELON-2 trial demonstrated cost-effectiveness of brentuximab vedotin with chemotherapy in frontline treatment of CD30-expressing peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL).