AJMC® Research Roundup: April 2019

Hi, I’m Christina Mattina for The American Journal of Managed Care^®. Here are 5 findings from research published in the April issue.

Do Health Systems Respond to the Quality of Their Competitors?

1. After Minnesota clinics began publicly reporting their performance on diabetes care measures, clinics doing worse than surrounding ones did not improve their performance, indicating that competition-based strategies to improve care quality may have a limited effect.

Time to Fecal Immunochemical Test Completion for Colorectal Cancer

2. Fecal immunochemical tests to screen for colorectal cancer were completed more quickly by older and Asian members of a health plan, whereas there were decreases in test completion associated with being a woman, younger, or overweight, indicating disparities in screening adherence.

Deaths Among Opioid Users: Impact of Potential Inappropriate Prescribing Practices

3. Opioid users in Georgia’s Medicaid program had higher rates of all-cause death if they experienced inappropriate prescribing practices, and the rates of both inappropriate prescriptions and death were higher among fee-for-service enrollees than managed care enrollees.

Impact of Clinical Training on Recruiting Graduating Health Professionals

4. A study in the Department of Veterans Affairs found that trainees’ ratings of the clinical learning environment, their personal experiences, and the culture of psychological safety were associated with changes in willingness to work in those health systems after graduation.

The Health and Well-being of an ACO Population

5. Calculating current and future health scores and a well-being score in a health plan’s member population revealed the conditions most responsible for worsening current health, and identified that increasing healthy eating is the greatest opportunity for improving future health.

To read all of these studies and more, visit AJMC.com.