Health Care Delivery

At the 2022 V-BID Summit, hosted by the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan, representatives of CMS and the Commonwealth Fund gave an update on the efforts to monitor, evaluate, and improve health equity in the United States.

Dennis P. Scanlon, PhD, professor of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University and editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Accountable Care®, talks about major systemic and fundamental barriers to health systems becoming learning health systems.

Although the widespread use of low dose computed tomography screening for lung cancer has led to improved mortality in recent years, disparities in uptake persist throughout the United States.

The acceleration of science and medicine is exciting, but these new advances are not always moving into practice, said Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of the Vascular Disease Prevention Program and director of Preventive Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Why persons with type 1 diabetes and continuous insulin infusion fail to achieve optimal glycemic control was the subject of a recent focus group analysis conducted among 37 adult men and women.

Patients with atopic dermatitis who achieved rapid changes in skin pain severity with the Janus kinase inhibitor baricitinib were associated with clinically significant improvement in Dermatology Life Quality Index scores.

Patients who cardiologists see once every few months are getting handed over to pharmacists who can monitor them more frequently and get them to their goals, said Crystal Zhou, PharmD, assistant professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

In this case, a patient died 18 months following his transplant after developing de novo intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

The Biden administration plans to expand Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage to more families; new guidelines jointly announced by cardiology organizations for the treatment and prevention of heart failure; World Health Organization estimates that 99% of people worldwide are exposed to poor air quality.

Many of the accountable care organization (ACO) models are being tested to find changes to make to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, but there is a general problem with short-lived models ending and being replaced by new ones, said Michael Chernew, PhD.

Mitigating the high cost of prescription drugs is a win-win to address the complex, multipronged problem of getting patients to take their medications as advised.

With more people living with HIV now reaching advanced ages and qualifying for Medicare coverage, this new study investigated HIV-related influences on their health care spending, particularly antiretroviral therapy (ART), compared with a population who does not have HIV.

Later school start times are being considered to address youth mental health crises; states are taking action to enact legislation on opioid addiction and fentanyl-related deaths; Unilever recalls 2 Suave aerosol antiperspirant products due to a potential carcinogen.

Certain types of ophthalmic care were more successful with video visits based on what was required to treat patients, said Darren Chen, MD student at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

A significantly greater proportion of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps reported symptom-free days for at least 1 symptom when treated with dupilumab vs placebo in the 28 days preceding 24-week and 52-week analysis intervals.

Additional analyses from the SCORED trial further highlight sotagliflozin's benefits among patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, regardless of cardiovascular disease presence.

Only half of pediatric patients with atopic dermatitis who fit the criteria of having severe disease were identified as such by managing physicians.

Milind Desai, MD, MBA, director of the Center for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and medical director of the Center for Aortic Diseases, Cleveland Clinic, speaks on therapeutic implications of the VALOR-HCM late-breaking clinical trial findings presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology's 71st Scientific Session.

This new analysis of data from the Swedish Heart Failure Registry involved an investigation into the relationship between therapy count and dosing on mortality and morbidity among patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF).

Both fidaxomicin and vancomycin are recommended for treatment of Clostridioides difficile infections, but real-world data suggest fidaxomicin should be the go-to treatment option.

Democrats and Republicans are near agreement on a $10 billion COVID-19 funding package; scientists perform the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome; more than a third of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the pandemic.

Conversations are ongoing between CMS and patient advocates on how accountable care organizations (ACOs) and similar programs can better interface with beneficiaries.

Orly Vardeny, PharmD, MS, core investigator, Center for Care Delivery and Outcomes Research, and associate professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School, discusses key barriers to access of novel therapies and what sessions she’s looking forward to during the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) 71st Annual Scientific Session.

Younger and older patients with noneosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with nasal polyps showed significant differences in preoperative blood eosinophil levels and postoperative modified Lund-Kennedy scores.

Findings of 2 abstracts presented at the 2022 American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Annual Meeting showed that ruxolitinib cream (​​Opzelura) demonstrated significant improvement vs vehicle in patients with atopic dermatitis of Black race and across anatomic regions.

Levosimendan appeared to increase in-hospital survival rates, although no long-term survival benefit was reported, among patients with comorbid heart failure and connective tissue disease–associated pulmonary arterial hypertension (CTD-PAH).

Patients with severe asthma continue to have residual disease despite initiating treatment with biologics, and severe uncontrolled asthma is associated with higher economic burden compared with controlled asthma, according to 2 posters.

Investigators say it may soon be possible to design therapies better at staving off resistance among patients with lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma/Waldenström macroglobulinemia (LPL/WM), which is an incurable disease.

Racial and ethnic health disparities are documented and substantial, but the data are out there to create programs that successfully address these disparities, said panelists.