How Insurance Status Influences Emergency Department Visit Rates
A study published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, reveals that newly insured and newly uninsured adults are more likely to go to the emergency department (ED) due to recent changes in health insurance status. The report is part of the journal's Health Care Reform series. The hospital ED is a significant indicator for access to care. According to the researchers, newly insured and newly uninsured individuals can find it hard to access outpatient care, and as a result may turn to hospital EDs in order to receive medical care.
Antidepressant Prescribing Less Likely For Medicaid, Medicare And Minority Patients
According to an article published online last month in the International Journal of Psychiatry, African-Americans and Hispanics with major depressive disorder are less likely to get antidepressants than Caucasian patients, whilst Medicare and Medicaid patients have a lesser chance of receiving the newest generation of antidepressants. To gain more insight into Physician's antidepressant prescribing patterns, researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health decided to conduct an analysis in which they evaluated who and what antidepressants were prescribed from data obtained from 1993 to 2007.
In Hospitals With Pay-For-Performance Programs, No Improvement In Patient Outcomes Seen
Paying hospitals to improve their quality of care, known as pay-for-performance, has gained wide acceptance in the U.S. and Medicare has spent tens of millions of dollars on bonuses and rewards for hospitals to improve. However, little is known about whether pay-for-performance actually improves patient outcomes over the long term. A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) finds no evidence that the largest hospital-based P4P program in the U.S. improved 30-day mortality rates, a measure of whether patients survive their hospitalization.