Category Archives: Health Care Systems

Surgical Outcomes Found to be Better at ‘Brand Name’ than Affiliate Cancer Hospitals

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Daniel J. Boffa, MDAssociate Professor of Thoracic SurgeryYale School of Medicine

Dr. Boffa

Daniel J. Boffa, MD
Associate Professor of Thoracic Surgery
Yale School of Medicine

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

Response: Prominent cancer hospitals have been sharing their brands with smaller hospitals in the community.  We conducted a series of nationally representative surveys and found that a significant proportion of the U.S. public assumes that the safety of care is the same at all hospitals that share the same respected brand.  In an effort to determine if safety was in fact the same, we examined complex surgical procedures in the Medicare database.

We compared the chance of dying within 90 days of surgery between top-ranked hospitals, and the affiliate hospitals that share their brands.  When taking into account differences in patient age, health, and type of procedure, Medicare patients were 1.4 times more likely to die after surgery at the affiliate hospitals, compared to those having surgery at the top-ranked cancer hospitals.

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Sunshine Act Has Not Increased Number of Patients Who Know Whether Their Own Physician Receives Industry Payments

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Genevieve P. Kanter, PhDAssistant Professor (Research) of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health PolicyUniversity of Pennsylvania Perelman School of MedicinePhiladelphia, PA  19104-6021

Dr. Kanter

Genevieve P. Kanter, PhD
Assistant Professor (Research) of Medicine
Medical Ethics and Health Policy
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Philadelphia, PA 

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

Response: In 2010, the US Congress—concerned about the adverse influence of financial relationships between physicians and drug and device firms, and the lack of transparency surrounding these relationships—enacted the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. This legislation required pharmaceutical and medical device firms to report, for public reporting through the Open Payments program, the payments that these firms make to physicians.

We sought to evaluate the effect of Open Payments’ public disclosure of industry payments information on US adults’ awareness of the issue of industry payments and knowledge of whether their physicians’ had received industry payments.  Continue reading →

Majority of Surveyed Hospitals Prohibit Physician Participation in End of Life Option Act

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Cindy L. Cain, PhDAssistant ProfessorDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Alabama at BirminghamBirmingham, AL 35233 

Dr. Cain

Cindy L. Cain, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, AL 35233  

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

Response: The End of Life Option Act permits terminally ill Californians to request a prescription for medications that would hasten death, providing they meet all requirements of the law and follow the steps outlined by their health care provider.

However, the law also allows health care providers and organizations to opt out of participating. Until now, we did not know how common it was for entire health care organizations to opt out.

In this study, we found that 61% of the surveyed hospitals prohibited physician participation in the End of Life Option Act. Thirty-nine percent of hospitals did allow participation in the law; these participating hospitals were less likely to be religiously affiliated and more likely to be nonprofit.

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Not All Skilled Nursing Patients Seen Promptly By Physicians After Transfer From Hospital

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Kira L. Ryskina  MD MSAssistant Professor Of MedicineDivision of General Internal MedicinePerelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Ryskina

Kira L. Ryskina  MD MS
Assistant Professor Of Medicine
Division of General Internal Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine,
University of Pennsylvania 

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

Response: Post-acute care in skilled nursing facilities (SNF or sometimes called subacute rehab) is a very common discharge destination after a hospital stay. Patients discharged to these facilities represent more clinically complex and high-need patients than patients discharged home.

We wanted to understand how soon after discharge from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility are patients seen by a physician. We found that first visits by a physician or advanced practitioner (a nurse practitioner or physician assistant) for initial medical assessment occurred within four days of SNF admission in 71.5 percent of the stays. However, there was considerable variation in days to first visit at the regional, facility, and patient levels.

One in five initial physician visits occurred more than 4 days after admission to skilled nursing facilities.  In 10.4 percent of stays there was no physician or advanced practitioner visit. Much of the variability in visit timing had to do with SNF characteristics and geography compared to patient clinical or demographic characteristics. Patients who did not receive a physician visit had nearly double the rates of readmissions or deaths compared to patients who were seen.  Continue reading →

Catholic Hospitals Often Not Transparent About Health Care Restrictions In Their Institutions

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Maryam Guiahi, MDAssociate Professor, Ob/GynSchool of MedicineUniversity of Colorado

Dr. Guiahi

Maryam Guiahi, MD
Associate Professor, Ob/Gyn
School of Medicine
University of Colorado 

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

Response: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops expects providers in Catholic Health Care Facilities to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which places limits on reproductive and end-of-life care.

Prior research has demonstrated that many patients do not anticipate religious health care restrictions, yet often face conflicts in care. We were interested in whether Catholic hospitals disclose their religious affiliation and explain to patients how this affiliation may impact the care they are offered.

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Formal Education Not Enough To Teach Effective Patient Handoffs Among Medical Residents

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Nicholas A. Rattray, Ph.D.Research Scientist/InvestigatorVA HSR&D Center for Health Information and CommunicationImplementation Core, Precision Monitoring to Transform Care (PRISM) QUERIRichard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical CenterIndiana University Center for Health Services & Outcomes ResearchRegenstrief Institute, Inc.Indianapolis, Indiana

Dr. Rattray

Nicholas A. Rattray, Ph.D.
Research Scientist/Investigator
VA HSR&D Center for Health Information and Communication
Implementation Core, Precision Monitoring to Transform Care (PRISM) QUERI
Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Indiana University Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research
Regenstrief Institute, Inc.
Indianapolis, Indiana


on behalf of study co-authors re:
Rattray NA, Flanagan ME, Militello LG, Barach P, Franks Z, Ebright P, Rehman SU,
Gordon HS, Frankel RM

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

Response: End-of-shift handoffs pose a substantial patient safety risk. The transition of care from one doctor to another has been associated with delays in diagnosis and treatment, duplication of tests or treatment and patient discomfort, inappropriate care, medication errors and longer hospital stays with more laboratory testing. Handoff education varies widely in medical schools and residency training programs. Although there have been efforts to improve transfers of care, they have not shown meaningful improvement.

Led for the last decade by Richard Frankel, Ph.D., a senior health scientist at Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University and professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, our team has studied how health practitioners communicate during end-of-shift handoffs. In this current study, funded by VA Health Services and Research Development, we conducted interviews with 35 internal medicine and surgery residents at three VA medical centers about a recent handoff and analyzed the responses. Our team also video-recorded and analyzed more than 150 handoffs.

Published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, this study explains how the person receiving the handoff can affect the interaction. Medical residents said they changed their delivery based on the doctor or resident who was taking over (i.e., training level, preference for fewer details, day or night shift). We found that handoff communication involves a complex combination of socio-technical information where residents balance relational factors against content and risk. It is not a mechanistic process of merely transferring clinical data but rather is based on learned habits of communication that are context-sensitive and variable, what we refer to as “recipient design”.

In another paper led by Laura Militello, we focus on how residents cognitively prepare for handoffs. In the paper published in The Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety®, researchers detailed the tasks involved in cognitively preparing for handoffs. A third paper, published in BMC Medical Education, reports on the limited training that physicians receive during their residency. Residents said they were only partially prepared for enacting handoffs as interns, and clinical experience and enacting handoffs actually taught them the most.

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Flexible Medical Resident Duty Hours Did Not Pose Risks To Patients

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, PhDDirector, Center for Outcomes ResearchNancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair in Health Services ResearchChildren's Hospital of PhiladelphiaProfessor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology and Critical CarePerelman School of Medicine, University of PennsylvaniaProfessor of Health Care ManagementWharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Silber

Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Outcomes Research
Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair
Health Services Research
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology and Critical Care
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Professor of Health Care Management
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 

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

Response: This was a year-long randomized trial that involved 63 internal medicine residency programs from around the US.  In 2015-2016, about half of the programs were randomized to follow the existing rules about resident duty hours that included restrictions on the lengths of shifts and the rest time required between shifts (the standard arm of the trial) and the other half of the programs didn’t have those shift length or rest period rules (the flexible arm of the trial).  We measured what happened to the patients cared for in those programs (the safety study), and other studies examined how much sleep the residents received, and how alert they were at the end of shifts (the sleep study), and previously we published on the educational outcomes of the interns.

To measure the impact on patient outcomes when allowing program directors the ability to use a flexible shift length for their interns, we compared patient outcomes after the flexible regimen went into place to outcomes the year before in the same program. We did the same comparison for the standard arm. Then we compared the difference between these comparisons. Comparing before and after the implementation of the trial within the same program allowed us to be more confident that a particularly strong or weak program, or a program with especially sick or healthy patients, would not throw off the results of the study. The trial was designed to determine, with 95% confidence, if the flexible arm did not do more than 1% worse than the standard arm. If this were true for the flexible arm, we could say the flexible regimen was “non-inferior” to the standard regimen.

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Collaborative Chronic Care Model Improved Patient Outcomes in Complex Mental Health Patients

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Mark S. Bauer, M.D.Professor of Psychiatry, EmeritusHarvard Medical SchoolCenter for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR)VA Boston Healthcare System-152MBoston, MA 02130

Dr. Bauer

Mark S. Bauer, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus
Harvard Medical School
Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research
VA Boston Healthcare System-152M
Boston, MA 02130

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

Response: Collaborative Chronic Care Models (CCMs) have extensive evidence for their effectiveness in a wide variety of mental health conditions.  CCMs are frameworks of care that include several or all of the following six elements:  work role redesign for anticipatory, continuous care; self-management support for individuals in treatment; provider decision support; information system support for population-based and measurement-guided care; linkage to community resources; and organization and leadership support.

However, evidence for Collaborative Chronic Care Model effectiveness comes almost exclusively from highly structured clinical trials.  Little is known about whether CCMs can be implemented in general clinical practice settings, and the implementation evidence that does exist derives primarily from studies of the CCM used in primary care settings to treat depression.

We conducted a randomized, stepped wedge implementation trial using implementation facilitation to establish CCMs in general mental health teams in nine US Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers.

We found that establishing Collaborative Chronic Care Models was associated with reduced mental health hospitalization rates and, for individuals with complex clinical presentations, improvements in mental health status.  Additionally, standardized assessment of team clinicians indicated that facilitation improved clinician role clarity and increased focus on team goals.

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More Hospitals Dropped Addiction Services Than Added Them

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Cory E. Cronin PhDDepartment of Social and Public HealthOhio University College of Health Sciences and ProfessionsAthens, Ohio

Dr. Cronin

Cory E. Cronin PhD
Department of Social and Public Health
Ohio University College of Health Sciences and Professions
Athens, Ohio

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

Response: One of my primary areas of research is exploring how hospitals interact with their local communities. My own background is in health administration and sociology, and I have been working with colleagues in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine here at Ohio University (Berkeley Franz, Dan Skinner and Zelalem Haile) to conduct a series of studies looking at questions related to these hospital-community interactions.

This particular question occurred to us because of the timeliness of the opioid epidemic. In analyzing data collected from the American Hospital Association and other sources, we identified that the number of hospitals offering in-patient and out-patient substance use disorder services actually dropped in recent years, in spite of the rising number of overdoses due to opioid use. Other factors seemed to matter more in regard to whether a hospital offered these services or not.

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Accredited Hospitals Linked to Better Rectal Cancer Surgical Outcomes

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Alexis G. Antunez MS University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Alexis G. Antunez

Alexis G. Antunez MS
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor
Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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

Response: The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer is implementing a National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC), aiming to improve and standardize the quality of rectal cancer care in the United States. While this is a commendable goal, previous accreditation programs in other specialties have faced controversy around their uncertain impact on access to care. Furthermore, it is well established that the quality of rectal cancer care is associated with patients’ socioeconomic position. So, the NAPRC could have the unintended consequence of widening disparities and limiting access to high quality rectal cancer care for certain patient populations.  Continue reading →

Stroke: Outcomes of Patients Transferred for Thrombectomy

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Amrou Sarraj, MD, Associate Professor Department of Neurology

Dr. Sarraj

Amrou Sarraj, MD, Associate Professor
Department of Neurology
McGovern Medical School
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

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

Response: Secondary analyses of trials showing efficacy and safety of thrombectomy within 6-8 hours of stroke onset showed that patients who were transferred to centers performing thrombectomy from another hospital had worse outcomes than patients who presented directly to the thrombectomy centers. We wanted to assess if the thrombectomy outcomes differ between transferred patients and patients directly coming to the thrombectomy centers when patients are selected with advanced perfusion imaging.

We found that thrombectomy outcome rates were similar between patients who presented directly vs transferred from another hospital, including functional independence and safety outcomes. 

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Federal Incentives Did Not Reduce Catheter Infections in Hospitals

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Heather Hsu, MD MPH Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Boston University School of Medicine Boston Medical Center Boston, MA 02118

Dr. Hsu

Heather Hsu, MD MPH
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Boston University School of Medicine
Boston Medical Center
Boston, MA 02118

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

Response: In October 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented value-based incentive programs to financially reward or penalize hospitals based on quality metrics. Two of these programs – Hospital Value Based Purchasing and the Hospital Acquired Condition Reduction Program – began targeting hospitals’ rates of certain healthcare-associated infections deemed to be preventable in October 2015.

Previous studies demonstrated minimal impact of these value-based payment programs on other measures of hospital processes, patient experience, and mortality. However, their impact on healthcare-associated infections was unknown.

Our goal was to study the association of value-based incentive program implementation with healthcare-associated infection rates, using catheter-associated urinary tract infection in intensive care units (one of the targeted outcomes) as an example.

We found no evidence that federal value-based incentive programs had any measurable association with changes in catheter-associated urinary tract infection rates in the critical care units of US hospitals.

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Venezuela: Rapid Rise in Infant Mortality Linked to Health Care System Collapse

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
"By @plumavioleta "Atardecer en #caracas... #avebolivar # ccs #venezuela." via @PhotoRepost_app" by Pedro Fanega is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0Ms Jenny García, PhD candidate
Institut National d’Études Démographiques INED
Institut de Démographie de l’université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne IDUP
Paris, France

Prof Gerardo Correa, MSc
Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales IIES
Universidad Católica Andrés Bello UCAB
Caracas, Venezuela

Prof Brenda Rousset, PhD
Departamento de Estadística, Escuela de Sociología (FaCES)
Universidad Central de Venezuela UCV
Caracas, Venezuela

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

Response: Venezuela, as many countries in Latin America, showed substantial improvements in infant mortality rates during the last 60 years. However, the decreasing pattern might be reversing. Recent socioeconomic and political events have led to a collapse in living standards, along with a breakdown of the health system. At the same time, a strict secrecy policy has ruled public institutions, and since 2013 the Venezuelan government stopped publishing mortality statistics.

This study attempts to fill this gap and estimate infant mortality using hospital and census data after 2013.

The main finding is that infant mortality rates in Venezuela may have stopped decreasing and started increasing in 2009 – around the time funding for the Venezuelan health system started to be substantially reduced. By 2016, the infant mortality rate was 21.1 deaths per 1000 live births, which is 1.4 times the rate in 2008 (15.0 deaths per 1000 live births), and equivalent to the rate recorded in the late 1990s, meaning 18 years of progress may have been lost.  Continue reading →

VA Wait Times Now Often Shorter Than in Private Sector

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

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

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

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

medicoreachLauren 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

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

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

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.

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Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine Affects Both Women and Men

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, MD, MSc Professor (Strategic Chair) of Gender in Primary and Transmural Care Department of Primary and Community Care Radboud University Medical Center

Dr. Oertelt-Prigione

Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, MD, MSc
Professor (Strategic Chair) of Gender in Primary and Transmural Care
Department of Primary and Community Care
Radboud University Medical Center

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

Response: This publication is a part of the WPP (Watch, Protect, Prevent) Study conducted between 2014 and 2017 at Charité – Universitaetsmedizin in Berlin, Germany. The project was designed to achieve three goals: a) acquire information about the prevalence of sexual harassment in academic medicine, b) develop and implement specific preventative measures and c) design and adopt a workplace policy against sexual harassment. The two latter goals have been achieved and this manuscript describes the findings that prompted their adoption.

In our study we carefully dissected the harassment experiences of physicians working in our tertiary referral center. Verbal harassment throughout medical careers appears as a very common phenomenon that almost 70% of women and men experience at some point. Physical harassment is less common. While colleagues appear as the main perpetrators for both sexes, women report more frequently harassment by their superiors. Among the structural factors potentially associated with harassment, we only identified strong hierarchies. 

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: First, we show that although the perpetrator profiles differ, both women and men in our study sample are significantly affected by sexual harassment. Second, our results display a gradient of harassment experiences and their prevalence, i.e. the verbal and non-physical forms are more common than physical forms. We argue that tolerance of non-physical forms of misconduct will increase the risk for physical forms by fostering a belief of impunity. Third, in our sample, strong hierarchies associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing harassment in both females and males.

Overall, this data shows that sexual harassment is not an action perpetrated by a single individual, but has a systemic dimension, which needs to be addressed through cultural change. Only measures targeting communication culture, formal structures and interactions in academic medicine will lead to change. 

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?

Response: The investigation of sexual harassment is a complicated matter and should be addressed in detail. In order to design effective prevention measures, we need to know exactly what people have experienced. Hence, a simple question such as “Have you ever experienced sexual harassment?” within a statutory survey will most likely not help much in defining further steps.

The connection between communication patterns, hierarchies and harassment was very apparent in our sample and this area needs further investigation.

Last, the fact that men are also significantly affected emphasizes that this is not a women´s issue but a phenomenon that needs to be addressed to improve the working conditions for all healthcare providers.

Disclosures: Sabine Oertelt-Prigione received funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Charité Foundation, the Hans Boeckler Foundation and the Equal Opportunities Program of the City of Berlin. She has provided expert testimony on the issue of sexual harassment to the German Federal Antidiscrimination Agency and the German Parliament. She is a pro-bono expert advisor for ASTIA.

Citation:

Jenner S, Djermester P, Prügl J, Kurmeyer C, Oertelt-Prigione S. Prevalence of Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine. JAMA Intern Med. Published online October 03, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.4859 

Oct 3, 2018 @ 6:20 pm

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Healthcare Employees Can Work in a ‘Culture of Fear’, Where Speaking Up is Discouraged

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Professor Mary Dixon-Woods Director, The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institut (THIS Institute) University of Cambridge

Prof. Dixon-Woods

Professor Mary Dixon-Woods
Director, The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute
(THIS Institute)
University of Cambridge 

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

Response: The challenges around employee voice are well documented. For various reasons, employees in all industries are often reluctant to raise concerns when they witness disruptive or unsafe behaviour from their colleagues. But it’s crucial that they speak up – especially in healthcare. Patient safety may depend on it.

Our study focused on a large academic medical centre in the US that wanted to improve employee voice. Despite having reporting mechanisms in place, the organisation still had issues with disruptive behaviour from group of powerful senior individuals that went unchallenged and contributed to a culture of fear.

Through confidential interviews with 67 frontline staff and leaders and the organizational actions that followed, we learned it’s important for employees to feel that their concerns will be dealt with authentically. It also helps when healthcare organisations have clear definitions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and well-coordinated response mechanisms. Once someone does raise a concern, organizations need good, fair and transparent systems of investigations and be prepared to implement consequences for disruptive behaviour consistently.  Continue reading →

Voluntary Bundled Payment Program For Care After Acute Hospitalization Unable to Achieve Broad Participation

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

A Jay Holmgren Doctoral Student, Health Policy and Management Harvard Business School

A Jay Holmgren

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.

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What Causes Failures in Personal Protective Equipment Use in Hospitals?

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Sarah L. Krein, PhD, RN Research Career Scientist VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System Ann Arbor, MI 

Sarah L. Krein, PhD, RN
Research Career Scientist
VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System
Ann Arbor, MI

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

Response: We conducted this study to better understand the challenges faced by health care personnel when trying to follow transmission based precaution practices while providing care for hospitalized patients.  We already know from other studies that there are breaches in practice but our team was interested in better understanding why and how those breaches (or failures) occur so we can develop better strategies to ensure the safety of patients and health care personnel.

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2/3 Canadians Do Not Receive Timely Surgery for Hip Fractures

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Daniel Pincus MD Department of Surgery Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences University of Toronto

Dr. Pincus

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).

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Anesthesia, Sterility Measures Contribute To Large Carbon Footprint of Health Care Systems

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/armymedicine/6127836005">“surgery”</a> by <i> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/people/armymedicine/">Army Medicine</a> </i> is licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0"> CC BY 2.0</a>Andrea MacNeill MD MSc FRCSC
Surgical Oncologist & General Surgeon
University of British Columbia
Vancouver General Hospital
BC Cancer Agency

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

Response: Climate change is one of the most pressing public health issues of the present era, responsible for 140,000 deaths annually.  Somewhat paradoxically, the health sector itself has a considerable carbon footprint, as well as other detrimental environmental impacts.  Within the health sector, operating rooms are known to be one of the most resource-intensive areas and have thus been identified as a strategic target for emissions reductions.

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Price Transparency Not Keeping Up With High-Deductible Health Care Plans

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
“Health Insurance” by Pictures of Money is licensed under CC BY 2.0Allison Kratka
MD Candidate 2018
Duke University School of Medicine

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

Response: As there are increasing numbers of high-deductible plans and those with high rates of co-insurance, patients are increasingly expected to help contain the cost of their health care by being savvy health care consumers. We set out to determine how easy or hard it is to find healthcare prices online.

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Dr. Barbara McAneny, Value-Based Care Pioneer, First Oncologist Named As Incoming AMA President

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Barbara L. McAneny MD, CEO New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants, Ltd. Albuquerque, NM 87109

Dr. McAneny

Barbara L. McAneny MD, CEO
New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants, Ltd.
Albuquerque, NM 87109 

MedicalResearch.com:   What is the meant by value-based care?

Response: There are a lot of people using this term to mean a variety of things, confusion is not surprising.  Generally it means a move to pay more for better patient outcomes and less for worse patient outcomes.  Currently in our Fee for Service system, there are a lot of services for which there are no fees. That deficiency keeps physicians from looking at non face-to-face delivery methods or the use of other health professionals to augment the care they give, because we can’t afford to give services that we aren’t paid to give.

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Penalties for Readmissions Widens Financial Losses At Delta Safety Net Hospitals

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Hsueh-Fen Chen, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Health Policy and Management College of Public Health University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Little Rock, AR 72205

Dr. Chen

Hsueh-Fen Chen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Health Policy and Management
College of Public Health
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Little Rock, AR 72205

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

Response: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) and Hospital Value-based Purchasing (HVBP) Program in 2011 and implemented the two programs in 2013. These two programs financially motivate hospitals to reduce readmission rates and improve quality of care, efficiency, and patient experience. The Mississippi Delta Region is one of the most impoverished areas in the country, with a high proportion of minorities occupying in the region.  Additionally, these hospitals are  safety-net resources for the poor. It was largely unknown what the financial performance for the hospitals in the Mississippi Delta Region was under the HRRP and HVBP programs.

Dr. Chen and colleagues in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences compared the financial performance between Delta hospitals and non-Delta hospitals (namely, other hospitals in the nation) from 2008 through 2014 that were covered before and after the implementation of the HRRP and HVBP programs. The financial performance was measured by using the operating margin (profitability from patient care) and total margin (profitability from patient care and non-patient care)

Before the implementation of the HRRP and HVBP programs, Delta hospitals had weaker financial performance than non-Delta hospitals but their differences were not statistically significant. After the implementation of the HRRP and HVBP programs, the gap in financial performance between Delta and non-Delta hospitals became wider and significant. The unadjusted operating margin for Delta hospitals was about -4.0% in 2011 and continuously fell to -10.4% in 2014, while the unadjusted operating margin for non-Delta hospitals was about 0.1% in 2011 and dropped to -1.5% in 2014. The unadjusted total margin for Delta hospitals significantly fell from 3.6% in 2012 to 1.1% in 2013 and reached 0.2% in 2014, while the unadjusted total margin for non-Delta hospitals remained about 5.3% from 2012 through 2014. After adjusting hospital and community characteristics, the difference in financial performance between Delta and non-Delta remained significant.

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Trends in Opioid-Related Inpatient Stays Shifted After Switch to ICD-10 Coding

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Anne Elixhauser, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Rockville MD 20857

Dr. Elixhauser

Anne Elixhauser, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Rockville MD 20857

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

Response: Hospital inpatient data began using ICD-10-CM (I-10) codes on October 1, 2015.  We have been doing analysis using the new codeset to determine to what extent we can follow trends crossing the ICD transition—do the trends look consistent when we switch from I-9 to I-10?  Tracking the opioid epidemic is a high priority so we made this one of our first detailed analyses.  We were surprised to find that hospital stays jumped 14% across the transition, compared to a 5% quarterly increase before the transition (under I-9) and a 3.5% quarterly increase after the transition (under I-10).  The largest increase (63.2%) was for adverse effects in therapeutic use (side effects of legal drugs), whereas stays involving opioid abuse decreased 21% and opioid poisoning (overdose) decreased 12.4%.

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Coordination Program Reduced ER Visits and Readmissions in Medicaid Population

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Roberta Capp MD Assistant Professor Director for Care Transitions in the Department of Emergency Medicine University of Colorado School of Medicine Medical Director of Colorado Access Medicaid Aurora Colorado

Dr. Capp

Roberta Capp MD
Assistant Professor
Director for Care Transitions in the Department of Emergency Medicine
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Medical Director of Colorado Access Medicaid
Aurora Colorado

 

 

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

Response: Medicaid clients are at highest risk for utilizing the hospital system due to barriers in accessing outpatient services and social determinants.

We have found that providing care management services improves primary care utilization, which leads to better chronic disease management and reductions in emergency department use and hospital admissions.

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Financial Incentives to Physicians Did Not Increase Hospital Discharge Follow-Up Visits

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Lauren Lapointe-Shaw, MD Physician at University Health Network Department of Medicine University of Toronto 

Dr. Lapointe-Shaw

Dr. Lauren Lapointe-Shaw, MD
Physician at University Health Network
Department of Medicine
University of Toronto 

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

Response: Readmissions after hospital discharge are common and costly. We would like to reduce these as much as possible. Early physician follow-up post hospital discharge is one possible strategy to reduce readmissions. To this end, incentives to outpatient physicians for early follow-up have been introduced in the U.S. and Canada. We studied the effect of such an incentive, introduced to Ontario, Canada, in 2006.

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Arriving Late To Appointment Can Shorten Your Visit With The Doctor

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Chester G. Chambers, Ph.D.
Director, Enterprise Risk Management Program, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
Joint Appointment in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
Maqbool Dada, Ph.D.
Joint Appointment in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
John Hopkins Medicine
Kayode Ayodele Williams, M.B.A., M.B.B.S., M.D
Medical Director : Blaustein Pain Treatment Center
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
John Hopkins Medicine

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

Response: The result is based on a retrospective analysis of three specialty clinics in the Johns Hopkins System: a private practice low-volume clinic with one physician and no residents; a medium volume clinic that used one attending physician for each clinic session and included residents; and a high-volume clinic with multiple attending physicians and several residents.

Our main finding is that physicians adjust face time based on congestion in the clinic, and seem to do this without always knowing they are doing it. Patients who arrive early and whose service begins before their appointment times, tend to get more face-time then other patients. This is similar to other service systems in which first-line providers speed-up when they see long queues at their stations.This is important because most of the prior research in this setting assumed that this never takes place. We verified that it does happen in multiple settings and the changes in processing rates are statistically significant. This means we need to rethink many earlier conclusions about how clinics run.

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Access To Two Different Health Care Systems Can Lead To Dangerous Presciption Combinations

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr-Joshua-M-Thorpe.jpg

Dr. Joshua Thorpe

Joshua M. Thorpe, PhD, MPH
From the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and
Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care
Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics
University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy

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

Response: Care coordination for persons with dementia is challenging for health care systems under the best of circumstances. These coordination challenges are exacerbated in Medicare-eligible veterans who receive care through both Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Recent Medicare and VA policy changes (e.g., Medicare Part D, Veteran’s Choice Act) expand veterans’ access to providers outside the VA. While access to care may be improved, seeking care across multiple health systems may disrupt care coordination and increase the risk of unsafe prescribing – particularly in veterans with dementia. To see how expanded access to care outside the VA might influence medication safety for veterans with dementia, we studied prescribing safety in Veterans who qualified for prescriptions through the VA as well as through the Medicare Part D drug benefit.

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