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A path forward for digital therapeutics reimbursement. Med students don’t go to class. Hospital capacity constraints exacerbate racial bias. UnitedHealth moves to $0 copay for emergency drugs. IVI Methods Summit.
Month: September 2022
Physician adoption of digital
An AMA report out this month surveys physicians regarding their perceptions of digital health. This year’s survey replicates similar surveys in 2016 and 2019. Some of the key findings are: There has been an increase in the percentage of physicians that feel there are advantages in leveraging digital health solutions. The percentage of physicians who…
Does having health insurance reduce recidivism?
That is the question asked in a recent paper by Gollu et al. (2022). The study abstract is below: Although people who go through the prison and jail system in the United States have significant health care needs, many leave it with no health insurance and, as a result, they experience gaps in access to…
We’re paying more for the same drugs when they treat humans compared to animals. Is that a good thing?
A paper by Haque et al. (2022) inJAMA Internal Medicine looks at the price paid for drugs with indicated uses in both medical (i.e., human) and veterinary (i.e., animal) practice. The authors examined 200 human medications with the most prescription fills as identified in the ClinCalc database, who also had the same active ingredient in…
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Total work comp drug spend for 2020 was about $3 billion. “The share of high-SES friends among individuals with low SES… is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date” Prescription video games. “The health care industry annually dumps approximately 550 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere.” “Sharia…
An end to progress?
Perhaps not, but there is some sobering news from the United Nation’s 2021/2022 Human Development Report that was released this week. BBC reports: Over the past two years, nine out of 10 countries have slid backwards on the UN’s Human Development Index. Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and the impact of climate change are blamed for…
Challenges faced by rural hospitals
That is the topic of a commentary by Carroll et al. (2022) in Health Services Research. The first issue they discuss is access to care. A core challenge in rural communities is declining access to hospital care. Eight percent of rural hospitals have closed over the last decade, and closure rates have increased in recent…
Labor Day: Remote work and information workers
On Labor Day, I review the findings from a study published last year from Yang et al. (2021) titled “The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers“. The study examined data on more than 60,000 workers at Microsoft and found that: Our results show that firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration network of…