Appropriate Care: What’s the big deal? It is well known that the United States spends more than any other nation on healthcare, but as a nation, our health outcomes miss the mark. As evidence-based medicine evolves, it is important that our healthcare practices adapt. With burnout at an all-time high and staff shortages on the…
Doctors have long known that factors such as food insecurity, housing instability, transportation problems and financial problems can impact a patient’s health. Patients who are now returning to physicians’ offices and hospitals for routine checkups, deferred elective procedures, prescription refills and more are presenting with conditions made worse by lost jobs and the struggle to…
After nearly a year of health equity work, Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said the department will continue to make justice in the medical space a top priority. “Dr. King famously called injustice in health the most inhumane and shocking form of inequality,” Becerra began in a keynote address during…
During the pandemic, health care providers and institutions ramped up innovative, sustainable and increasingly digital ways to improve population health outcomes, and I expect this trend to continue. For over 20 years, I’ve advised health care provider teams across the U.S. on leveraging and incorporating digital technology and tools like patient portals, health trackers and…
When I graduated from medical school and took the Hippocratic Oath, I vowed to not just treat the illness on a patient’s medical history form but to treat the person behind the diagnosis. To do this well, clinicians need to understand the whole person and the context in which they live — their race, gender…
CMS is proposing a nearly 8% revenue increase for Medicare Advantage plans next year, according to a proposed payment plan released Wednesday. The overall rate increase for 2023 includes a 4.75% effective growth rate and a 3.5% average increase in risk scores. The risk-adjusted benchmark trend, which analysts peg as the key number, comes out…
Patient navigators could be effective in closing racial disparities in primary care access, according to new data, with the healthcare professionals able to connect more Hispanic patients than if patients went at it alone. The report, published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, particularly showed that Hispanic patients working with a…
The global pandemic spurred a rapid uptake of telehealth for nearly all health care providers and has permanently changed how health care is delivered. At present, providers and insurers are grappling with how to balance telehealth and in person care, focusing discussions around reimbursement models and logistical considerations. In this article, the authors discuss whether…
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought social and racial inequity to the forefront of public health. In the United States, the pandemic has affected many communities, including racial and ethnic minorities as well as low-income populations, more severely than other groups. Negative health outcomes are more common among individuals within these groups, and social determinants of…
As we reported on Wednesday, Jan. 12, “The top officials at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday, Jan. 11, made a major public statement regarding the goal of moving the healthcare system towards health equity, and a major component of that statement focused on leveraging Medicare’s value-based programs, particularly those…