Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Kaiser Permanente, Primary Care / 17.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Richard W. Grant MD MPH Research Scientist III, Kaiser Permanente Division of Resarch Adjunct Associate Professor, UCSF Dept Biostatistics & Epidemiology Director, Kaiser Permanente Delivery Science Fellowship Program Co-Director, NIDDK Diabetes Translational Research post-doctoral training program MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Primary care in the United States is in a state of crisis, with fewer trainees entering the field and more current primary care doctors leaving due to professional burnout. Changes in the practice of primary care, including the many burdens related to EHR documentation, has been identified as a major source of physician burnout. There are ongoing efforts to reduce physician burnout by improving the work environment. One innovation has been the use of medical scribes in the exam room who are trained to enter narrative notes based on the patient-provider interview. To date, there have only been a handful of small studies that have looked at the impact of medical scribes on the provider’s experience of providing care. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Global Health, Infections, Vaccine Studies / 13.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Veronica Toffolutti PhD Research Fellow in Health Economics Bocconi University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Austerity has been linked to several health damaging effects such as suicides, increase in unmet needs, disease outbreaks that affect vulnerable peoples such as malaria in Greece, HIV in Greece and Romania during the current economic crises or in the earlier economic crisis cuts in public health expenditure have been linked with diphtheria and TB. Europe is experiencing declining vaccination rates and resurgences in measles incidence rates. Italy appears to be particularly affected reporting the second largest number, second to Romania, of infection in Europe in 2017. Starting from the point that the primary reason for the outbreak in the decline in the measles vaccination we test the hypothesis that large budget reductions in public health spending were also a contributing factor. Using data on 20 Italian regions for the period 2000-2014 we found that each 1% reduction in the real per capita public health expenditure was associated with a decrease of 0.5 percentage points (95% CI: 0.36-0.65 percentage points) in MMR coverage, after adjusting for time and regional-specific time-trends.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, University of Pennsylvania / 09.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amol Navathe, MD, PhD Assistant Professor, Health Policy and Medicine Perelman School of Medicine Penn Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Medicare’s voluntary Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative for lower extremity joint replacement (LEJR) surgery has been associated with reduced episode spending and stable-to-improved quality. However, BPCI may create unintended effects by prompting participating hospitals to increase the overall volume of episodes covered by Medicare. This could potentially eliminate Medicare-related savings or prompt hospitals to shift case mix to lower-risk patients. Among the Medicare beneficiaries who underwent LEJR, BPCI participation was not significantly associated with a change in market-level volume (difference-in-differences estimate . In non-BPCI markets, the mean quarterly market volume increased 3.8% from 3.8 episodes per 1000 beneficiaries before BPCI to 3.9 episodes per 1000 beneficiaries after BPCI was launched. In BPCI markets, the mean quarterly market volume increased 4.4% from 3.6 episodes per 1000 beneficiaries before BPCI to 3.8 episodes per 1000 beneficiaries after BPCI was launched. The adjusted difference-in-differences estimate between the market types was 0.32%. Among 20 demographic, socioeconomic, clinical, and utilization factors, BPCI participation was associated with changes in hospital-level case mix for only one factor, prior skilled nursing facility use in BPCI vs. non-BPCI markets.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, NEJM, Outcomes & Safety / 07.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Bruce Guthrie PhD Head of Population Health Sciences Division Professor of Primary Care Medicine and Honorary Consultant NHS Fife  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The UK Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF)) is a primary care pay for performance programme (P4P) implemented in 2004. QOF was and still is the largest healthcare P4P programme in the world, initially having ~150 indicators and accounting for ~20% of practice income. QOF has been reduced in scale and scope over time, with 40 indicators retired in 2014. It was abolished in Scotland in 2016 and is due to be further reformed in England. There is some evidence that P4P (and QOF itself) is associated with modest improvements in quality when introduced, but little evidence about what happens when financial incentives are withdrawn. Our study examined what happened when incentives were withdrawn in 2014 for 12 indicators where there is good before and after data. There were immediate reductions in documented quality of care, which were similar in size to improvements observed when incentives were introduced. These reductions were small to modest (~10%) for indicators relating to care that is already systematically delivered (eg routine diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease) and large for indicators which has historically been less systematically delivered (eg lifestyle advice). (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, OBGYNE / 07.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michelle H. Moniz, MD, MSc Assistant Professor Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2800 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We wanted to examine whether Medicaid expansion in Michigan was associated with improved access to birth control/family planning services in our state.  We conducted a survey of enrollees in the Michigan Medicaid expansion program (called "Healthy Michigan Plan"). We found that 1 in 3 women of reproductive age reported improved access to birth control/family planning services after joining HMP.  Women who were younger, who were uninsured prior to joining HMP, and those who had recently seen a primary care clinician were most likely to report improved access.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Surgical Research, Technology / 03.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: A robotically assisted surgical system: WikipediaChris Childers, M.D. Division of General Surgery David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA 10833 Le Conte Ave., CHS 72-247 Los Angeles, CA 90095 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The robotic surgical approach has gained significant traction in the U.S. market despite mixed opinions regarding its clinical benefit. A few recent randomized trials have suggested there may be no clinical benefit of the robotic approach for some surgical procedures over the more traditional open or laparoscopic (“minimally-invasive”) approaches. Previous studies have also suggested the robotic approach is very expensive, but until our study, there was no benchmark for the true costs (to the hospital) of using the robotic platform. Our study analyzed financial statements from the main supplier of robotic technology. We found that the use of robotic surgery has increased exponentially over the past decade from approximately 136 thousand procedures in 2008 to 877 thousand procedures in 2017. The majority of these procedures were performed in the United States. While most people think of the robotic approach in urologic and perhaps gynecologic surgery, the fastest growing segment has been general surgery, for procedures such as colorectal resections, hernia repairs and gallbladder removals. In total, over 3 billion dollars was spent by hospitals to acquire and use robotic platforms in 2017 with 2.3 billion dollars in the United States. This equates to nearly $3,600 per procedure performed. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, JAMA / 22.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Chana A. Sacks, MD, MPH Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Brigham and Women’s Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Combination pills combine multiple medications into a single dosage form. There have been case reports in recent years of high prices for certain brand-name combination drugs – even those that are made up of generic medications. Our study looks at this phenomenon in a systematic way using recently released Medicare spending data. We evaluated 29 combination drugs and found that approximately $925 million dollars could potentially have been saved in 2016 alone had generic constituents been prescribed as individual pills instead of using the combination products. For example, Medicare reported spending more than $20 per dose of the combination pill Duexis, more than 70 times the price of its two over-the-counter constituent medications, famotidine and ibuprofen. The findings in this study held true even for brand-name combination products that have generic versions of the combination pill. For example, Medicare reported spending more than $14 for each dose of brand-name Percocet for more than 4,000 patients, despite the existence of a generic combination oxycodone/acetaminophen product. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Medicare, NYU, Prostate Cancer / 22.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Danil V. Makarov, MD, MHS Department of Urology and Department of Population Health New York University Langone School of Medicine VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service Cancer Institute, New York University School of Medicine, New York MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Reducing prostate cancer staging imaging for men with low-risk disease is an important national priority to improve widespread guideline-concordant practice, as determined by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines. It appears that prostate cancer imaging rates vary by several factors, including health care setting. Within Veterans Health Administration (VHA), physicians receive no financial incentive to provide more services. Outside VHA, the fee-for-service model used in Medicare may encourage provision of more healthcare services due to direct physician reimbursement. In our study, we compared these health systems by investigating the association between prostate cancer imaging rates and a VA vs fee-for-service health care setting. We used novel methods to directly compare Veterans, Medicare Recipients, and Veterans that chose to receive care from both the VA at private facilities using Medicare insurance through the Choice Act with regard to rates of guideline-discordant imaging for prostate cancer. We found that Medicare beneficiaries were significantly more likely to receive guideline-discordant prostate cancer imaging than men treated only in VA. Moreover, we found that men with low-risk prostate cancer patients in the VA-only group had the lowest likelihood of guideline-discordant imaging, those in the VA and Medicare group had the next highest likelihood of guideline-discordant imaging (in the middle), and those in the Medicare-only group had the highest likelihood of guideline-discordant imaging.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Medicare, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 20.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kim Lind, PhD, MPH Research Fellow Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research Australian Institute of Health Innovation Macquarie University, NSW MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) is a preventive care visit that was introduced in 2011 as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Prior to this, the only preventive care exam covered by Medicare was the Welcome to Medicare Visit, which is only available for people in their first year of Medicare enrolment. The AWV is available each year to beneficiaries without co-payment to people who are past their first year of Medicare enrolment. The AWV focuses on prevention and early detection of disease. Racial disparities in healthcare utilization and health outcomes have been well documented in the US. Prior expansions of Medicare coverage have had varied effects on reducing disparities. For example, in 2001 Medicare began to cover colorectal cancer screening which reduced racial disparities for some minority groups with respect to screening rates and improved early detection. Expanding coverage of preventive care for people on Medicare may help reduce disparities in health outcomes, but we first needed to know if people were using the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit. Our goal was to assess AWV utilization rates and determine if utilization differed by race or ethnicity. We analyzed a nationally representative database of Medicare beneficiaries (the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey) that included self-reported race, ethnicity, income and education, linked to Medicare claims. We found that Medicare Annual Wellness Visit use was low but increased from 2011 to 2013. We also found that people on Medicare who self-identified as belonging to a racial or ethnic minority group had lower AWV utilization rates than non-Hispanic white people. People with lower income or education, and people living in rural areas had lower Medicare Annual Wellness Visit utilization.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Compliance, Cost of Health Care, University of Michigan / 05.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: A. Mark Fendrick, M.D. Professor, Division of General Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine and Department of Health Management and Policy Director, University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2800 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: As Americans are being asked to pay more for the medical care, in terms of copayments and deductibles, one in four Americans reports having difficulty paying for their prescription drugs. One potential solution is “value-based insurance design,” or V-BID. V-BID, is built on the principle of lowering or removing financial barriers to essential, high-value clinical services. V-BID plans align patients’ out-of-pocket costs, such as copayments and deductibles, with the value of services to the patient. They are designed with the tenet of “clinical nuance” in mind— in that the clinical benefit derived from a specific service depends on the consumer using it, as well as when, where, and by whom the service is provided. According to a literature review published in the July 2018 issue of Health Affairs,  The researchers found that value-based insurance design programs which reduced consumer cost-sharing for clinically indicated medications resulted in increased adherence at no change in total spending. In other words, decreasing consumer cost-sharing meant better medication adherence for the same total cost to the insurer. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care / 02.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jodi L. Liu, PhD Associate policy researcher RAND Corporation MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The New York Health Act (NYHA) would create a state-based single-payer plan called New York Health. The NYHA has been proposed in the New York State Assembly for many years. New York Health would provide all residents with comprehensive health benefits with no cost sharing and create new taxes to help fund the program. In this study, we used microsimulation modeling to analyze the impact of the NYHA on outcomes such as health care utilization and costs. We estimate that total health care spending could be similar or slightly lower if administrative costs and provider payment rates are reduced. The program would require substantial new taxes and would shift the types of payments people make for health care. After the presumed redirection of federal and state health care outlays to New York Health, we estimate that the new taxes revenue needed to finance the program in 2022 would be $139 billion. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Medicare, UCSF / 01.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Andrew B. Bindman, MD Professor of Medicine PRL- Institute for Health Policy Studies University of California San Francisco MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use and impact of a payment code for transitional care management services which was implemented by Medicare in. The transition of patients from hospitals or skilled nursing facilities back to the community often involves a change in a patient’s health care provider and introduces risks in communication which can contribute to lapses in health care quality and safety. Transitional care management services include contacting the patient within 2 business days after discharge and seeing the patient in the office within 7-14 days. Medicare implemented payment for transitional care management services with the hope that this would increase the delivery of these services believing that they could reduce readmissions, reduce costs and improve health outcomes. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cost of Health Care, Mammograms, Medical Imaging / 29.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michal Horný PhD Assistant Professor Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences Emory University Rollins School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management Atlanta, GA 30322 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Increased breast tissue density is a common finding at screening mammography. Approximately 30-50% of women have so-called “dense breasts” but many of them are not aware of it. The problem is that the increased tissue density can potentially mask early cancers. In other words, if there is cancer hiding in dense breast tissue, it could be difficult to spot it. To improve the awareness of breast tissue density, a patient group called Are You Dense Advocacy, Inc., started lobbying state and federal policymakers to pass laws mandating health care providers to notify women about their breast density assessments. As a result, 31 states have already enacted some form of legislation regarding dense breast tissue. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA / 27.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Manali Patel MD MPH Assistant Professor of Medicine, Oncology Stanford Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: In prior work, many patients with advanced stages of cancer report a lack of understanding of their prognosis and receipt of care that differs from their preferences. These gaps in care delivery along with the unsustainable rise in healthcare spending at the end-of-life and professional healthcare provider shortages led our team to consider new ways to deliver cancer care for patients.  Based on input from focus groups with patients, caregivers, oncology care providers and healthcare payers, we designed a novel model of cancer care to address these gaps in care delivery.  The intervention consisted of a well-trained lay health worker to assist patients with understanding and communicating their goals of care with their oncology providers and caregivers. We found that patients who received the six-month intervention reported greater satisfaction with the care they received and their decision-making, had higher rates of hospice use, lower acute care use, and 95% lower total healthcare expenditures in the last month of life.  The intervention resulted in nearly $3 million dollars in healthcare savings. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care / 23.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jonathan Gruber PhD Department of Economics, E52-434 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: There is a large literature trying to estimate the extent of 'defensive  medicine' by looking at what happens when it gets harder to sue and/or  you can win less money. But there have been no studies of what happens if you just get rid of the right to sue.  That's what we have with active duty patients treated on a military base. The main finding is that when patients can't sue they are treated about  5% less intensively.  Much of the effect appears to arise from fewer diagnostic tests. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Pediatrics / 19.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Julie L. Hudson, PhD Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Rockville, Maryland MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Since 2013, public coverage has increased not only among low-income adults newly eligible for Medicaid but also among children and adults who were previously eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Recent research has shown that growth in public coverage varied by state-level policy choices. In this paper we study the growth in public coverage (Medicaid/CHIP) for three population samples living in Medicaid Expansion states between 2013 and 2015: previously eligible children, previously eligible parents, and newly eligible parents by state-level marketplace policies (Note: eligibility refers to eligible for Medicaid/CHIP, eligibility for marketplace subsidized coverage). All marketplaces are required to assess each applicants’ eligibility for both the marketplace and for Medicaid/CHIP. States running state-based marketplaces are required to enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants directly into public coverage (Medicaid or CHIP), but states using federally-facilitated marketplaces can opt to require their marketplace to forward these cases to state Medicaid/CHIP authorities for final eligibility determination and enrollment. We study the impact of marketplace policies on public coverage by observing changes in the probability Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible children and parents are enrolled in public coverage across three marketplace structures: state-based marketplaces that are required to enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants directly into public coverage, federally-facilitated marketplaces in states that enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants directly into public coverage, and federally-facilitated marketplaces with no authority to enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants into public coverage. Supporting the existing literature, we find that public coverage grew between 2013-2015 for all three of our samples of Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible children and parents living in Medicaid expansion states. However, we show that growth in public coverage was smallest in expansion states that adopted a federally-facilitated marketplace and gave no authority to the marketplace to enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants directly into public coverage. Additionally, once we account for enrollment authority, we found no differences in growth of public coverage for eligible children and parents living in expansion states that adopted a state-based marketplace versus those in states that adopted a federally-facilitated marketplaces with the authority to directly enroll Medicaid-/CHIP-eligible applicants (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Geriatrics / 07.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jonathan H. Watanabe, PharmD, PhD, BCGP Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy National Academy of Medicine Anniversary Fellow in Pharmacy Division of Clinical Pharmacy | Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences | University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA  Jonathan H. Watanabe, PharmD, PhD, BCGP Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy National Academy of Medicine Anniversary Fellow in Pharmacy Division of Clinical Pharmacy | Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences | University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: As a clinician in older adult care and as a health economist, I’ve been following the news and research studies on older patients unable to pay for their medications and consequently not getting the treatment they require. Our goal was to measure how spending on the medications Part D spends the most on, has been increasing over time and to figure out what prices patients are facing out-of-pocket to get these medications. In 2015 US dollars, Medicare Part D spent on the ten highest spend medications increased from $21.5 billion in 2011 to $28.4 billion in 2015.  The number of patients that received one of the ten highest spend medications dropped from 12,913,003 in 2011 to 8,818,471--- a 32% drop in that period. A trend of spending more tax dollars on fewer patients already presents societal challenges, but more troubling is that older adults are spending much more of their own money out-of-pocket on these medications.  For patients without a federal low income subsidy, the average out-of-pocket cost share for one of the ten highest spend medications increased from $375 in 2011 to $1,366 in 2015.  This represented a 264% increase and an average 66% increase per year.  For patients receiving the low income subsidy, the average out-of-pocket cost share grew from $29 in 2011 to $44 in 2015 an increase of 51% and an average increase of 12.7% per year.  This may not sound like much, but for those living close to the federal poverty level this can be the difference between foregoing necessities to afford your medications or choosing not to take your medications.   (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA / 06.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr Nora Pashayan PhD

Clinical Reader in Applied Health Research

University College London

Dept of Applied Health Research

London 

MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?

Response: Not all women have the same risk of developing breast cancer and not all women have the same potential to benefit from screening.

 

If the screening programme takes into account the individual variation in risk, then evidence from different studies indicate that this could improve the efficiency of the screening programme. However, questions remain on what is the best risk-stratified screening strategy, does risk-stratified screening add value for money, and what are benefit and harm trade-offs.

(more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, End of Life Care, Medicare, Science / 06.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amy Finkelstein PhD John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics MIT Department of Economics National Bureau of Economic Research Cambridge MA 02139  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Although only 5% of Medicare beneficiaries die in a given year, they account for almost 25% of Medciare spending. This fact about high end of life spending has been constantly used to refer to inefficiency of the US healthcare system. A natural observation is that the fact is retrospective, and it motivated us to explore a prospective analog, which would take as an input the probability of someone dying in a given year rather than her realized outcome. We therefore used machine learning techniques to predict death, and somewhat to our surprise we found that at least using standardized and detailed claims-level data, predicting death is difficult, and there are only a tiny fraction of Medicare beneficiaries for whom we can predict death (within a year) with near certainty. Those who end up dying are obviously sicker, and our study finds that up to half of the higher spending on those who die could be attributed to the fact that those who die are sicker and sick individuals are associated with higher spending.   (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Hospital Acquired, Medicare / 02.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael S. Calderwood, MD, MPH, FIDSA Regional Hospital Epidemiologist Assistant Professor of Medicine Infectious Disease & International Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: Prior work by Lee et al. (N Engl J Med 2012;367:1428–1437) found that the 2008 CMS Hospital-Acquired Conditions (HAC) policy did not impact already declining national rates of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) or catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs). We studied why this policy did not have its intended impact by looking at coding practices and the impact of the policy on the diagnosis-related group (DRG) assignment for Medicare hospitalizations. The DRG assignment determines reimbursement for inpatient hospitalizations. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, Health Care Systems, JAMA / 26.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: A Jay Holmgren Doctoral Student, Health Policy and Management Harvard Business School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Post-acute care, care that is delivered following an acute care hospitalization, is one of the largest drivers of variation in US health care spending. To address this, Medicare has created several payment reform systems targeting post-acute care, including a voluntary bundled payment program known as the Model 3 of the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) Initiative for post-acute care providers such as skilled nursing facilities, long-term care hospitals, or inpatient rehabilitation facilities. Participants are given a target price for an episode of care which is then reconciled against actual spending; providers who spend under the target price retain some of the savings, while those who spend more must reimburse Medicare for some of the difference. Our study sought to evaluate the level of participation in this program and identify what providers were more likely to participate. We found that fewer than 4% of eligible post-acute care providers ever participated in the program, and over 40% of those who did participate dropped out. The providers more likely to remain in the program were skilled nursing facilities that were higher quality, for-profit, and were part of a multi-facility organization. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Medicare, Orthopedics / 12.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amol Navathe, MD, PhD Assistant Professor, Health Policy and Medicine Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Bundled payment is a key Medicare Alternative Payment Model (APM) developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to increase health care value by holding health care organizations accountable for spending across an episode of care. The model provides financial incentives to maintain quality and contain spending below a predefined benchmark. In 2013, CMS launched the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative to expand bundled payment nationwide. BPCI’s bundled payment design formed the basis for CMS’s Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) Model beginning in 2016. While the programs are similar in design, BPCI is voluntary while CJR is mandatory for hospitals in selected markets. Moreover, CJR is narrower in scope, focusing only on lower extremity joint replacement (LEJR) and limiting participation to hospitals. (more…)
Author Interviews, CMAJ, Cost of Health Care, Health Care Systems, Hip Fractures, Surgical Research / 12.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel Pincus MD Department of Surgery Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences University of Toronto MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We chose to look at hip fractures because is the most common reason for urgent surgery complications have be tied to wait times (and in particular wait times greater than 24 hours). (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs, End of Life Care, NEJM, University of Pittsburgh / 30.05.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Douglas B. White, M.D., M.A.S. Director of the Clinical Research Investigation and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness (CRISMA) Center’s Program on Ethics and Decision Making in  Department of Critical Care Medicine University of Pittsburgh  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?  Response: We set out to test the effectiveness of PARTNER (PAiring Re-engineered ICU Teams with Nurse-driven Emotional Support and Relationship-building). PARTNER is delivered by the interprofessional team in the ICU, consisting of nurses, physicians, spiritual care providers, social workers and others who play a part in patient care. The program is overseen by nurse-leaders in each ICU who receive 12 hours of advanced communication skills training to support families. The nurses meet with the families daily and arrange interdisciplinary clinician-family meetings within 48 hours of a patient coming to the ICU. A quality improvement specialist helps to incorporate the family support intervention into the clinicians’ workflow. PARTNER was rolled out at five UPMC ICUs with different patient populations and staffing. It was implemented in a staggered fashion so that every participating ICU would eventually get PARTNER. Before receiving PARTNER, the ICUs continued their usual methods of supporting families of hospitalized patients. None of the ICUs had a set approach to family communication or required family meetings at regular intervals before receiving PARTNER. A total of 1,420 adult patients were enrolled in the trial, and 1,106 of these patients’ family members agreed to be a part of the study and its six-month follow-up surveys. The patients were very sick, with about 60 percent dying within six months of hospitalization and less than 1 percent living independently at home at that point. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, End of Life Care, Geriatrics, JAMA, Medicare / 23.05.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: William B Weeks, MD, PhD, MBA The Dartmouth Institute MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The background for the study is that a common narrative is that end-of-life healthcare costs are driving overall healthcare cost growth.  Growth in end-of-life care has been shown, in research studies through the mid 2000’s, to be attributable to increasing intensity of care at the end-of-life (i.e., more hospitalizations and more use of ICUs). The main findings of our study are that indeed there have been substantial increases in per-capita end-of-life care costs within the Medicare fee-for-service population between 2004-2009, but those per-capita costs dropped pretty substantially between 2009-2014.  Further, the drop in per-capita costs attributable to Medicare patients who died (and were, therefore, at the end-of-life) accounts for much of the mitigation in cost growth that has been found since 2009 in the overall Medicare fee-for-service population. (more…)
Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Kidney Disease / 22.05.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lilia Cervantes, M.D. Internal Medicine, Hospitalist Denver Health and Hospital Authority Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine Founder, Healthcare Interest Program and Health Equity Lecture Series at Denver Health University of Colorado Health Sciences Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response:  For most undocumented immigrants with kidney failure in the U.S., access to hemodialysis is limited and they can only receive it when they are critically ill and near-death.  This type of “emergency-only” hemodialysis is already known to be nearly 4-fold more costly, has 14-fold higher mortality rate, and leads to debilitating physical and psychosocial distress for these patients compared to those receiving regular hemodialysis. This study shows that clinicians who are forced to provide this substandard care are also harmed.  They experience moral distress, emotional exhaustion, and several other drives of professional burnout due to witnessing needless suffering and high mortality.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, Lung Cancer, Prostate Cancer / 02.05.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Matthew P. Banegas, PhD, MPH Center for Health Research Kaiser Permanente MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Despite a large body of research on cancer care costs, we observed a significant evidence gap. Namely, while about one-half of cancer diagnoses in the U.S. occur among people under age 65, it can be difficult to find good data on the costs of care for this population. That’s because most of the current literature on cancer care costs is based on SEER Medicare data, which are limited to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. At a time of rising costs and an ever-increasing number of new therapies, we felt it was important to improve our understanding of cancer costs for U.S. adults of all ages. We examined medical care costs for the four most common types of cancer in the United States: breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, End of Life Care, JAMA / 01.05.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: R. Sean Morrison, MD Ellen and Howard C. Katz Professor and Chair Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York, NY 10029 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Palliative care is team based care that is focused on improving quality of life and reducing suffering for persons with serious illness and their families.  It can be provided at any age and in concert with all other appropriate medical treatments.  Palliative care has been shown to improve patient quality of life, patient and family satisfaction, and in diseases like cancer and heart failure, improve survival.  A number of individual studies have shown that palliative care can reduce costs by providing the right care to the right people at the right time. This study pooled data from six existing studies to quantify the magnitude of savings that high quality palliative care provides. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Pharmaceutical Companies / 09.04.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Aaron Mitchell, MD Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Financial relationships between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry are very common. However, we are just beginning to figure out whether these relationships may lead to potentially concerning changes in physician behavior - whether physicians tend to prescribe more of the drugs made by a company that has given them money. We decided to ask whether oncologists who receive money from drugmakers are more likely to use the cancer drugs made by companies that have given them money in the past. In studying two specific groups of cancer drugs, one for kidney cancer and one for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), we found that oncologists who had received payments such as meals, consulting fees, travel & lodging expenses from the manufacturer of one of these drugs tended to use that drug more. When looking at oncologists who received payments for research, we found increased prescribing among the kidney cancer drugs but not the CML drugs. (more…)