VA Wait Times Now Often Shorter Than in Private Sector

Posted on January 21, 2019 by Marie Benz MD FAAD

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Shulkin

David Shulkin, MD
Ninth Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Washington, District Of Columbia
Shulkin Solutions LLC
Gladwyne, Pennsylvania

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

Response: I came to VA in 2015 as Under Secretary for Health, as a result of the 2014 wait time crisis. At that time, it was determined that in some locations, veterans had been waiting for care for too long and there were allegations that this had resulted in harm to a number of veterans. I was in the private sector at the time, but was asked by President Obama to come and help improve the situation.

Upon my arrival we created systems to determine which veterans were waiting for urgent healthcare and which ones for routine care. From here, we established same day services for all veterans waiting for urgent care through primary care and behavioral health access points. This goal was achieved nationwide at the end of 2016. When I became Secretary in 2017, we began publishing our wait time data for all to see, so that veterans had accurate information on which to base their choices on and to provide transparency into where we were improving and where we needed to focus our efforts. In addition, through programmatic and legislative efforts, we expanded our utilization of private sector options so that veterans with clinical needs would be able to get better access to care.

This study was meant to determine whether our efforts from 2014 had resulted in improvements to access and in addition how access to care in the VA compared to access in the private sector. Despite limitations in the data available from the private sector (since others do not publish their actual wait time data similar to VA) we used a data set that we felt had some applicability for these comparisons.

We found that for the most part, VA wait times are often shorter than in the private sector, and that VA wait times had improved since 2014 while the private sectors access had stayed the same. Continue reading →

Hospitalist Workforce in the US is on a Growing Spree

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Marie Benz MD FAAD

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Lauren Williams
Marketing Manager and Research Analyst
MedicoReach
TwitterHandle: https://twitter.com/Lauren7321

MedicalResearch.com: What is the driving force behind the research and market study for estimating the hospitalist number in the US?

Response: The existing physician’s database available in the industry comprises details that don’t specify the number of hospitalists in particular. As a result, it is turning out challenging to track and count the hospitalists amidst other specialties. There are a lot of incorrect estimations that are circulating, giving no clear picture.

In a vast and growing industry like healthcare, there is no scope for wrong data as it can mislead others. Even the Physician Masterfile that the American Medical Association (AMA) offers do not cover the complete hospitalist population. This is because earlier the hospitalist specialty was not a part of the list of physicians.

Hospitalists work as primary care providers specializing in inpatient medicine. They play a significant role, coordinating with specialist physicians and other healthcare professionals. As a caregiver, they provide quality hospital care and boosts efficiency through effective hospital resource allocation. And so, how can we let their presence go overlooked? Our research aimed to bring out their actual numbers before the industry. That is why our research team came up with the research and market study to fetch real facts. Continue reading →

4-Meds in One Glaucoma Eyedrop May Decrease Preservatives, Lower Cost, Improve Compliance

Posted on November 7, 2018 by Marie Benz MD FAAD

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Radcliffe

Nathan Radcliffe, MD
Senior Faculty, Ophthalmology Glaucoma and Cataract surgeon
Mount Sinai Health System

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

Response: Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness and the mainstay of therapy is to lower the intraocular pressure (IOP) with topical eye drops.

Up to 40% of patients may require more than one eye drop to control the disease, and yet taking more than one eye drop bottle can result in higher costs, more eye irritation, worse therapeutic compliance, and possibly worse outcomes, be sure to consult your eye surgeon before increasing any eye treatment to ensure it won’t do any further damage to the eye. Compounded therapies (not FDA approved, but made at the physician’s request by a compounding pharmacy) can be created to contain multiple glaucoma therapies in one bottle.

We sought to determine if a compounded solution containing three or four drops in one bottle could control glaucoma as well as three or four separate bottles (standard of care) in patients requiring three or four eye drop bottles to control glaucoma.

We performed a multi-center, randomized, observer-masked, parallel-group study comparing a compounded therapy containing latanoprost 0.05%, dorzolamide hydrochloride 2%, timolol maleate 0.5%, brimonidine tartrate 0.2% with 0.01% BAK to standard three or four bottle regaimins. We measured IOP and corneal staining (a sign of preservative toxicity), as well as other safety measures at week one, month one, two and three.