All News

In the United States, health varies among communities and regions. People living in urban areas have different health issues than those living in rural areas based on cultures that either promote healthy lifestyles or limit access to healthcare.

A new report from the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement finds that the considerable differences among the total cost of healthcare in 5 states were mostly caused by local patterns of healthcare usage and pricing. The report, Healthcare Affordability: Untangling Cost Drivers, looks at the average cost of healthcare for comparable populations as its benchmark and compares each state with that average.

Last week, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) published its review of the leading oncology pathway vendors in the United States in the Journal of Oncology Practice. The report found that overall, the prominent commercial pathway programs in the United States are aligned with ASCO’s evaluation criteria.

The proposed budget released Monday would have winners and losers in Medicare; President Donald Trump's budget, a messaging statement, contains healthcare cuts; veterans in California risk eviction from veterans homes if they intend to use an aid-in-dying law.

Such a large drop in Americans' sense of well-being in their daily lives in a time of economic good fortune is unprecedented, index organizers say.

Health plans and patients need to know they can trust their diagnostic service provider, because genetic tests are not always the best option.

Of the 262 patients with type 2 diabetes in the intervention, 83% stuck with it through the first year, despite significant requirements.

Medicaid expansion in Kentucky led to an increase of screening mammograms, screening coverage, and breast-conserving surgery for women aged 20 to 64 with breast cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. However, the study also showed that time from diagnosis to operation increased post expansion and time from operation to chemotherapy remained unchanged.

Born as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the controversial Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was eliminated last week as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 without ever having been implemented. The IPAB sought to reign in Medicare spending if targets went over certain levels, but it had almost universal opposition from the healthcare and medical communities.

An individual’s body mass index (BMI) can increase when exposed to counties with a higher prevalence of obesity, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics.

The White House budget set for release Monday will include almost $17 billion to fight opioid addiction; a profile of FDA chief Scott Gottlieb, MD, describes him as someone who's become adept at balancing competing interests; the Trump administration is set to appoint a new drug czar with no public health experience.

There's only a month until the application portal closes for the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement Advanced initiative, the first value-based model launched under the Trump administration.

Native Americans experience a variety of health determinants in their everyday lives, and agencies like the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Indian Health Service, along with insurance company Premera Blue Cross, have prioritized American Indian and Alaska Native health.

Fibrocell Science has submitted an Investigational New Drug Application (IND) with the FDA for a gene therapy candidate to treat moderate to severe localized scleroderma.

Black patients with prostate cancer are underrepresented in clinical trials due to eligibility requirements that exclude patients with benign ethnic neutropenia, according to a new study published in JAMA Oncology.

Multimorbidity is common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and is associated with high levels of polypharmacy, which can lead to an increased risk of adverse drug reactions.

The President and his new HHS secretary concur that drug prices in the United States are too high, and in a press briefing yesterday, Azar said that he has been “working a great deal on these issues already,” according to a Bloomberg report.

Researchers have used super-resolution microscopy to unveil the geodesic mesh that supports the outer membrane of a red blood cell, in a discovery that could eventually help uncover how the malaria parasite hijacks this mesh when it invades and eventually destroys red blood cells. The work was published in the latest issue of Cell Reports.

In a given year, lower back pain affects between one-third and two-thirds of older adults. A new study sought to determine if such pain in well-functioning older adults spurs declines in mobility. Results were mixed but the issue deserves further research, the authors reported.

Coverage of our peer-reviewed research and news reporting in the healthcare and mainstream press.

This week, the top managed care stories included Indiana being approved as the second state to implement work requirements in Medicaid; research found 5-year survival rates for cancer are increasing; coverage from the American Society of Clinical Oncology's 2018 Genitourinary Symposium.

President Trump will reportedly unveil a Medicare Part D cost strategy next week; a bipartisan drug pricing measure was left out of the budget deal; hand sanitizer is popping up all over the Winter Olympics in South Korea in an effort to fight back against a norovirus outbreak.

According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), hospital readmission rates have fallen following implementation of the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), and HRRP did not have a negative impact on mortality rates.

This week, drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb announced in a press release that the ongoing Phase 3 Checkmate-227 trial met its co-primary endpoint of progression-free survival with Opdivo plus Yervoy combination versus chemotherapy in first-line advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients whose tumors have high levels of an emerging biomarker called tumor mutation burden.

After a brief shutdown in the dead of night, the Senate passed a spending bill, which was the result of a deal reached by Republicans and Democrats to fund military and domestic programs for 2 years. The House passed the bill shortly after.

A long-term follow-up analyzing the toxic effects and results from a phase 1 clinical trial of adult patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who were treated with CD19-specific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells found patients with low disease burden had a longer medial overall survival and a lower incidence of toxicity.

Awareness of blockchain technology among healthcare executives has risen over the past year, especially over the past several months, according to a webinar hosted by Healthcare Research & Analytics® (HRA), a market research firm. However, since the technology is still in its infancy stages, that interest has not translated into widespread adoption, according to the presenters.

Precision co-pay assistance programs have the potential to improve prescription affordability while increasing efficiency of limited patient assistance funds.

From 2002 to 2015, CD4 cell counts at the start of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) increased, and the proportion of individuals with severe immunodeficiency at the start of cART decreased among all income groups, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Patients with metastatic urothelial cancer treated with atezolizumab monotherapy demonstrated tolerability for the drug and general ability to manage adverse effects, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology.