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Despite the increasing focus on the concept of “value” in healthcare, there is lack of consensus on a definition of value. While patient-centricity has been a steady refrain in healthcare, we question whether the values, needs, and preferences of patients have been meaningfully incorporated into value assessments thus far.

This week, the top managed care news included HHS Secretary Alex Azar hinting that the government may get more involved in addressing social needs impacting health; work rules in Arkansas cost thousands their Medicaid coverage; research finds a shorter course of hepatitis C treatment may be just as effective as the full course of treatment.

A recent study found that a combination treatment of glecaprevir and pibrentasvir is both effective and well tolerated in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) who have failed previous therapies.

According to a new study presented at The Liver Meeting, combining universal screening for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) with reflex RNA PCR in pregnant women is more cost-effective than risk-based screening.

With the possible release of 2 therapies for peanut allergies on the horizon, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is opening up a review looking at the effectiveness and value of these potential treatments and oral immunotherapy (OIT) regimens.

The president of FAIR Health demonstrates the changes in behavioral health coverage over the past decade through the prism of the rise in claims.

During a joint meeting of the FDA’s Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee and Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, members voted in favor of approval for Mallinckrodt’s MNK-812, an abuse-deterrent formulation of oxycodone.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is recommending that clinicians offer the treatment to people at high risk of HIV, which will likely increase access to the treatment for those who need it most.

Greater infection rate, higher white blood cell, monocyte, and absolute neutrophil counts are more significantly associated with severe congenital neutropenia than with patients with idiopathic and recovered neutropenia, according study results.

Patients who have migraine often suffer from coexisting issues, such as sleep difficulties, vertigo, and dizziness. A study evaluating the presence of certain symptoms in patients with migraine indicated that some may have a common pathophysiology.

Even if gene therapies do prove to be cost-effective in providing patients with much-needed treatments for genetic diseases, the question of how to pay for these therapies remains largely unanswered.

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

No significant differences in bone mineral density (BMD) were observed between patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) who received thyroid-stimulating hormone suppression (TSHS) and those who did not, according to a recent study.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services announced Tuesday that the newly approved program can begin as soon as April 1, 2019, and will be phased in regionally over several months.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said this week that care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is expected to cost the United States $49 billion by 2020, as it recapped its research portfolio to mark World COPD Day 2018.

Developing clearer guidelines for measuring a hospital's orientation toward population health would be a big step towards fundamentally improving population health and changing the relationship between a hospital and its community.

The 2019 outlook for health insurers in the United States looks stable; Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Representative Ro Khanna, D-California, have released a bill that takes cues from President Donald Trump’s proposal to reduce Medicare drug costs through the use of an international pricing index; older Americans should be aware of what is in their medical records and whether the data are accurate.

A pharmaceutical company proactively reached out to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of HHS to find out if giving a costly drug for a rare condition—free of charge, in the hope of eventually getting the drug covered by payors—to hospitals would violate federal kickback law, and was told it probably would.

During a case study, employees were more willing to have less robust coverage in areas like dental, vision, and diagnostic benefits so that the group could have access to more comprehensive mental health and maternity services.

According to a new study, cellular proliferation generates the majority of infected cells during antiretroviral therapy (ART), suggesting that reducing proliferation can decrease the size of the HIV reservoir and work toward a cure.

There have been few therapeutic options for treating thrombocytopenia in MDS patients. Now, early phase data suggest that CC-486 (oral azacytidine, an investigational drug sponsored by Celgene) is a relatively safe and effective treatment for thrombocytopenic patients with MDS.

Ultrasounds are a safer and equally effective diagnostic tool compared with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose and monitor pregnant women with suspected active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a new report published in Radiology Case Reports.

A new investigational drug has demonstrated high response rates in patients with a rare but highly aggressive blood disease that currently has no approved therapies, according to new research led by investigators at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr, D-New Jersey, who is set to be chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, supports the concept of a single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill in the next Congress, but said the votes aren’t there and there are other priorities; an emergency department doctor was shot and killed by her former fiancé at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, along with a first-year pharmacy resident and a city police officer who rushed into the chaos; Kaleo, which sells a voice-activated auto-injector device that delivers a version of naloxone, raised the price of its opioid antidote product by more than 600% between 2014 and 2017.

The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania will become the 28th member institution to join the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), it was announced Tuesday.

A new study, published in the International Journal of COPD, concludes that the increase in endothelial microparticles and various microparticles in the systemic circulation that accompanies chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can lead to disease exacerbation and could be used as early biomarkers on disease progression.

Earlier this month, Merck announced that the FDA approved its anti–PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab (sold as Keytruda), for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have been previously treated with sorafenib.

A 2015 study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health made a change in blood pressure guidelines seem inevitable. But there is disagreement between the standards promoted by societies for family physicians and those for cardiologists, leading to confusion for those in daily practice.

Following treatment with either a lifestyle intervention or migraine education, patients with migraine had improved pain acceptance and lower migraine-related disability.

A California union that provided major funding for successful ballot campaigns to expand Medicaid in 3 red states this year, is looking ahead to 2020; smoke from the wildfire in Northern California has created dangerous air quality that exceeds pollution levels in China and India; the World Health Organization evacuated 16 people working to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following a rebel attack.