Health Care Delivery

The high court in North Dakota voted to protect abortion in that state; an outside panel of FDA expert advisors voted to support a full approval for Paxlovid; Sanofi follows competitors' price caps for insulin.

Medicare prospective payment for dialysis modestly increased availability and use of home-based dialysis treatment but did not affect historic racial disparities in home dialysis.

Spending on novel therapies in high-risk bladder cancer had minimal impact on Oncology Care Model payments to practices, according to this cohort study and an average performance estimation.

Lawyers were questioned in a federal lawsuit intending to overturn approval of a drug used for medication abortion; during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, US maternal mortality increased for the third year in a row; the Alzheimer’s Association is lobbying Congress to push for Medicare coverage of new Alzheimer drugs under early access.

The Skin Pain Numeric Rating Scale, Worst-Itch Numeric Rating Scale, and Dermatology Life Quality Index were evaluated for their content validity, fit-for-purpose, and psychometric and measurement properties among patients with the chronic skin disease being treated with dupilumab.

Risk of flare in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) was low after fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for the treatment of recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).

A recent study identified disparities in cachexia incidence among patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) across different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

A health system transformational leadership framework and management system made visible and eliminated defects in value and was associated with reduced annual Medicare expenditures and increased quality between 2017 and 2020.

Findings of a meta-analysis showed that women with epilepsy were at increased odds of miscarriage, stillbirth, and maternal death, and risk of poor perinatal outcomes increased with greater use of antiseizure medication.

There may be discrepancies in the types of information patients want and the information they receive when multiple myeloma treatment decisions are made, a recent study found.

The Biden administration released the list of 27 Medicare Part B drugs that are subject to rebates back to the government for having price increases that rose faster than inflation as well as the removal of out-of-pocket costs for some vaccines covered under Part D.

In this new analysis, investigators found significant agreement between in-person and remote assessments.

COVID-19 strained already-burdened community partners, affecting service delivery, communication, and partnerships. Managed care organization (MCO) partnerships with these organizations evolved in response to changing needs and resources.

Patients who had ruxolitinib added to their prophylactic regimens had lower rates of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

Manmeet Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, chief, Solid Tumor Medical Oncology; deputy director; and chief scientific officer at Miami Cancer Institute, addressed disparities in genomic testing among minority patients with cancer, as well as equitable care strategies at his organization’s Center for Equity in Cancer Care & Research.

When a series of winter storms in Austin, Texas, in February 2021, 62% of children with epilepsy were negatively affected, according to a new study.

Biden’s proposed budget emphasizes expanding health care and lowering drug costs; nasal spray zavegepant (Zavzpret) approved for treating adults with acute migraine; updated guidelines may help more women detect breast cancer early on.

A session at the ACCC 2023 Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit addressed the promise and potential drawbacks of multicancer early detection (MCED) testing for patients in the primary care setting.

A combination of evidence-based interventions and team-based approaches shows efficacy in helping physicians care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to one study.

Given the cost and impact of chronic diseases on the US health care system, health technology like digital coaching for chronic diseases is increasingly being looked at as a way to offer personalized therapies on a wide scale.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital identified new targets for small molecule drugs to counter Clostridioides difficile colonization and infection (CDI) in the gut and provide a new approach to rapidly define microbial metabolism for other applications.

Perampanel, a novel antiepileptic drug, was associated with a reduction in seizure frequency of at least 50% in more than half of children and adolescents in a meta-analysis.

The new recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) urge viewing the totality of evidence when evaluating biosimilar products.

Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and incoming medical director at Thyme Care, spoke on financial toxicity, heterogeneity of cancer, and other complex factors in oncology care systems that may perpetuate disparities in health care outcomes and delivery among patients.

Patients with complex chronic disease can be grouped by varying propensity for health care continuity patterns, which could be harnessed to personalize health care utilization interventions.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Jennifer Schneider, MD, co-founder and chief executive officer of Homeward, a value-based care provider aiming to improve access to high-quality care in rural communities through tech-enabled clinical services, partnerships with local physicians and health plans, and community-level demographic data.

The growth in telehealth utilization continued an increase begun in November 2022.

The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) 49th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit will feature presentations and interactive workshops centered on the latest in technology, care delivery, and payment issues in oncology.

A recent study found that a latent cytomegalovirus infection can have a negative effect on mRNA vaccine responsiveness to COVID-19 infection.

Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates’ No One Left Alone initiative works to dismantle cancer health disparities and increase health care equity among its rural patient population. Sashi Naidu, MD, director of research, discusses delivering next-generation sequencing testing to patients.