AJMC® in the Press, December 7, 2018

The Washington Examiner’s article on privatizing public funds for healthcare included a study published in The American Journal of Managed Care^®. The study, “Medicaid Managed Care Reduces Readmissions for Youths With Type 1 Diabetes,” found that youths with type 1 diabetes on Medicaid managed care were less likely to be readmitted within 90 days of discharge, adjusting for severity, despite rates of diabetic ketoacidosis.

A study published in AJMC^® was mentioned in articles from Skilled Nursing News and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. The study, “Medicare Advantage Control of Postacute Costs: Perspectives From Stakeholders,” examined the methods that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans use to control or reduce postacute spending and their associated unintended consequences. The researchers found that in their interactions with hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), MA plans attempted to influence the choice of SNF and length of stay to control postacute spending. However, exerting too much influence over hospitals and SNFs may have the negative consequences of delayed hospital discharge and SNFs’ avoidance of burdensome plans.

The University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design’s Center Policy Update mentioned the AJMC^® study “Understanding and Improving Value Frameworks With Real-World Patient Outcomes.” The study concluded that collective stakeholders that include key decision makers within our healthcare system need to recognize the importance of implementing real-world evidence and devote resources to further research into the chronic disease areas in which the impact of human behavior is amplified by the duration of disease and treatment.

The National Pharmaceutical Council’s Monday CER Daily Newsfeed highlighted an article from AJMC^®’s 60th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition coverage. The article, “Real-World Evidence With Axicabtagene Ciloleucel CAR T Treatment Similar to ZUMA-1 Trial Findings,” reported on a multicenter retrospective study that evaluated the efficacy and safety of the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell treatment in a real-world setting and found a similar response as well as toxicity compared with the ZUMA-1 clinical trial.

Tuesday’s CER Daily Newsfeed included an AJMC^® interview with Michael Kolodziej, MD, vice president and chief innovation officer at ADVI Health, Inc. During the interview, Kolodziej explained that while new therapies like CAR T-cell therapy can have amazing results, the innovation of these treatments has outstripped the United States’ ability to pay for them.