Leading a Healthcare Organization During a Period of Social Change: A Qualitative Study of Chief Executive Officers.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, organizational leaders have faced growing pressure to respond to social and political issues. Although previous research has examined the experiences of corporate CEOs engaging in these issues, less is known about the perspectives of healthcare leaders. OBJECTIVE: To explore the experiences of healthcare CEOs engaging in health-related social and political issues, with a specific focus on systemic racism and abortion policy. DESIGN: Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews from February to July 2023. PARTICIPANTS: CEOs of US-based hospitals or health systems. APPROACH: One-on-one interviews which were audio recorded, professionally transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. KEY RESULTS: This study included 25 CEOs of US-based hospitals or health systems. Almost half were between ages 60 and 69 (12 [48%]), 19 identified as male (76%), and 20 identified as White (80%). Approximately half self-identified as Democrats (13 [55%]). Most hospitals and health systems were private non-profits (15 [60%]). The interviews organized around four domains: (1) Perspectives on their Role, (2) Factors Impacting Engagement, (3) Improving Engagement, and (4) Experiences Responding to Recent Polarizing Events. Within these four domains, nine themes emerged. CEOs described increasing pressure to engage and had mixed feelings about their role. They identified personal, organizational, and political factors that affect their engagement. CEOs identified strategies to measure the success of their engagement and also reflected on their experiences speaking out about systemic racism and abortion legislation. CONCLUSIONS: In this qualitative study, healthcare CEOs described mixed perspectives on their role engaging in social and political issues and identified several factors impacting engagement. CEOs cited few strategies to measure the success of their engagement. Given that healthcare leaders are increasingly asked to address policy debates, more work is needed to examine the role and impact of healthcare CEOs engaging in health-related social and political issues.

Factors Informing High-Risk Primary Care Patient Choice around Telehealth Use: a Framework.

BACKGROUND: While telehealth's presence in post-pandemic primary care appears assured, its exact role remains unknown. Value-based care's expansion has heightened interest in telehealth's potential to improve uptake of preventive and chronic disease care, especially among high-risk primary care populations. Despite this, the pandemic underscored patients' diverse preferences around using telehealth. Understanding the factors underlying this population's preferences can inform future telehealth strategies. OBJECTIVE: To describe the factors informing high-risk primary care patient choice of whether to pursue primary care via telehealth, in-office or to defer care altogether. DESIGN: Qualitative, cross-sectional study utilizing semi-structured telephone interviews of a convenience sample of 29 primary care patients between July 13 and September 30, 2020. PARTICIPANTS: Primary care patients at high risk of poor health outcomes and/or acute care utilization who were offered a follow-up primary care visit via audiovisual, audio-only or in-office modalities. APPROACH: Responses were analyzed via grounded theory, using a constant comparison method to refine emerging categories, distinguish codes, and synthesize evolving themes. KEY RESULTS: Of the 29 participants, 16 (55.2%) were female and 19 (65.5%) were Black; the mean age (SD) was 64.6 (11.1). Participants identified four themes influencing their choice of visit type: perceived utility (encapsulating clinical and non-clinical utility), underlying costs (in terms of time, money, effort, and safety), modifiers (e.g., participants' clinical situation, choice availability, decision phenotype), and drivers (inclusive of their background experiences and digital environment). The relationship of these themes is depicted in a novel framework of patient choice around telehealth use. CONCLUSIONS: While visit utility and cost considerations are foundational to participants' decisions around whether to pursue care via telehealth, underappreciated modifiers and drivers often magnify or mitigate these considerations. Policymakers, payers, and health systems can leverage these factors to anticipate and enhance equitable high-value telehealth use in primary care settings among high-risk individuals.

Training Health Policy Researchers on Policy Engagement and Research Translation for Greater Impact: Evaluation of the Amplify@LDI Program.

BACKGROUND: Few researchers receive formal training in research translation and dissemination or policy engagement. We created Amplify@LDI, a training program for health services and health policy researchers, to equip them with skills to increase the visibility of their research through translation and dissemination activities. AIMS: To describe the program's participants and curriculum, and evaluate the first 2 years of the program. SETTING: The Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). PARTICIPANTS: An annual cohort of 12 LDI Senior Fellows (Penn faculty) from multiple schools, disciplines, and ranks at Penn. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: The Amplify@LDI curriculum includes 6 sessions on different aspects of research translation and dissemination, including media and social engagement, writing Op-Eds, and policy engagement. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Participants reported measurable increases in time spent on translation and dissemination activities, as well as new enthusiasm for and confidence in policy engagement. Participants' reach (as measured by Altmetric) increased during the program, compared to smaller increases or reductions in reach for two comparator groups. DISCUSSION: In our preliminary evaluation of Amplify@LDI, we find strong evidence of positive impact from participant evaluations, and suggestive evidence that participation in the program is associated with significant increases in the reach of their research.

Substance Use and Overdose in Public Libraries: Results from a Five-State Survey in the US.

In the U.S., overdoses have become a health crisis in both public and private places. We describe the impact of the overdose crisis in public libraries across five U.S. states, and the front-line response of public library workers. We conducted a cross-sectional survey, inviting one worker to respond at each public library in five randomly selected states (CO, CT, FL, MI, and VA), querying participants regarding substance use and overdose in their communities and institutions, and their preparedness to respond. We describe substance use and overdose patterns, as well as correlates of naloxone uptake, in public libraries. Participating library staff (N = 356) reported witnessing alcohol use (45%) and injection drug use (14%) in their libraries in the previous month. Across states surveyed, 12% of respondents reported at least one on-site overdose in the prior year, ranging from a low of 10% in MI to a high of 17% in FL. There was wide variation across states in naloxone uptake at libraries, ranging from 0% of represented libraries in FL to 33% in CO. Prior on-site overdose was associated with higher odds of naloxone uptake by the library (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.1-5.7). Although 24% of respondents had attended a training regarding substance use in the prior year, over 90% of respondents wanted to receive additional training on the topic. Public health professionals should partner with public libraries to expand and strengthen substance use outreach and overdose prevention efforts.

Engaging Consumers in Medicaid Program Design: Strategies from the States.

Policy Points As Medicaid programs grow in scale and complexity, greater consumer input may guide successful program design, but little is known about the extent to which state agencies are engaging consumers in the design and implementation of programs and policies. Through 50 semistructured interviews with Medicaid leaders in 14 states, we found significant variation in consumer engagement approaches, with many common facilitators, including leadership commitment, flexible strategies for recruiting and supporting consumer participation, and robust community partnerships. We provide early evidence on how state Medicaid agencies are integrating consumers' experiences and perspectives into their program design and governance. CONTEXT: Consumer engagement early in the process of health care policymaking may improve the effectiveness of program planning and implementation, promote patient-centric care, enhance beneficiary protections, and offer opportunities to improve service delivery. As Medicaid programs grow in scale and complexity, greater consumer input may guide successful program design, but little is known about the extent to which state agencies are currently engaging consumers in the design and implementation of programs and policies, and how this is being done. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews with 50 Medicaid program leaders across 14 states, employing a stratified purposive sampling method to select state Medicaid programs based on US census region, rurality, Medicaid enrollment size, total population, ACA expansion status, and Medicaid managed care penetration. Interview data were audio-recorded, professionally transcribed, and underwent iterative coding with content and thematic analyses. FINDINGS: First, we found variation in consumer engagement approaches, ranging from limited and largely symbolic interactions to longer-term deliberative bodies, with some states tailoring their federally mandated standing committees to engage consumers. Second, most states were motivated by pragmatic considerations, such as identifying and overcoming implementation challenges for agency programs. Third, states reported several common facilitators of successful consumer engagement efforts, including leadership commitment, flexible strategies for recruiting and supporting consumers' participation, and robust community partnerships. All states faced barriers to authentic and sustained engagement. CONCLUSIONS: Sharing best practices across states could help strengthen programs' engagement efforts, identify opportunities for program improvement reflecting community needs, and increase participation among a population that has traditionally lacked a political voice.

Developing an Automatic System for Classifying Chatter About Health Services on Twitter: Case Study for Medicaid.

BACKGROUND: The wide adoption of social media in daily life renders it a rich and effective resource for conducting near real-time assessments of consumers' perceptions of health services. However, its use in these assessments can be challenging because of the vast amount of data and the diversity of content in social media chatter. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop and evaluate an automatic system involving natural language processing and machine learning to automatically characterize user-posted Twitter data about health services using Medicaid, the single largest source of health coverage in the United States, as an example. METHODS: We collected data from Twitter in two ways: via the public streaming application programming interface using Medicaid-related keywords (Corpus 1) and by using the website's search option for tweets mentioning agency-specific handles (Corpus 2). We manually labeled a sample of tweets in 5 predetermined categories or other and artificially increased the number of training posts from specific low-frequency categories. Using the manually labeled data, we trained and evaluated several supervised learning algorithms, including support vector machine, random forest (RF), naïve Bayes, shallow neural network (NN), k-nearest neighbor, bidirectional long short-term memory, and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT). We then applied the best-performing classifier to the collected tweets for postclassification analyses to assess the utility of our methods. RESULTS: We manually annotated 11,379 tweets (Corpus 1: 9179; Corpus 2: 2200) and used 7930 (69.7%) for training, 1449 (12.7%) for validation, and 2000 (17.6%) for testing. A classifier based on BERT obtained the highest accuracies (81.7%, Corpus 1; 80.7%, Corpus 2) and F1 scores on consumer feedback (0.58, Corpus 1; 0.90, Corpus 2), outperforming the second best classifiers in terms of accuracy (74.6%, RF on Corpus 1; 69.4%, RF on Corpus 2) and F1 score on consumer feedback (0.44, NN on Corpus 1; 0.82, RF on Corpus 2). Postclassification analyses revealed differing intercorpora distributions of tweet categories, with political (400778/628411, 63.78%) and consumer feedback (15073/27337, 55.14%) tweets being the most frequent for Corpus 1 and Corpus 2, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The broad and variable content of Medicaid-related tweets necessitates automatic categorization to identify topic-relevant posts. Our proposed system presents a feasible solution for automatic categorization and can be deployed and generalized for health service programs other than Medicaid. Annotated data and methods are available for future studies.

Consumer Views on Health Applications of Consumer Digital Data and Health Privacy Among US Adults: Qualitative Interview Study.

BACKGROUND: In 2020, the number of internet users surpassed 4.6 billion. Individuals who create and share digital data can leave a trail of information about their habits and preferences that collectively generate a digital footprint. Studies have shown that digital footprints can reveal important information regarding an individual's health status, ranging from diet and exercise to depression. Uses of digital applications have accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic where public health organizations have utilized technology to reduce the burden of transmission, ultimately leading to policy discussions about digital health privacy. Though US consumers report feeling concerned about the way their personal data is used, they continue to use digital technologies. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand the extent to which consumers recognize possible health applications of their digital data and identify their most salient concerns around digital health privacy. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews with a diverse national sample of US adults from November 2018 to January 2019. Participants were recruited from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a nationally representative panel. Participants were asked to reflect on their own use of digital technology, rate various sources of digital information, and consider several hypothetical scenarios with varying sources and health-related applications of personal digital information. RESULTS: The final cohort included a diverse national sample of 45 US consumers. Participants were generally unaware what consumer digital data might reveal about their health. They also revealed limited knowledge of current data collection and aggregation practices. When responding to specific scenarios with health-related applications of data, they had difficulty weighing the benefits and harms but expressed a desire for privacy protection. They saw benefits in using digital data to improve health, but wanted limits to health programs' use of consumer digital data. CONCLUSIONS: Current privacy restrictions on health-related data are premised on the notion that these data are derived only from medical encounters. Given that an increasing amount of health-related data is derived from digital footprints in consumer settings, our findings suggest the need for greater transparency of data collection and uses, and broader health privacy protections.

Changes in Infective Endocarditis Admissions in Pennsylvania During the Opioid Epidemic.

BACKGROUND: With the current opioid crisis in the United States, infectious complications related to injection drug use are increasingly reported. Pennsylvania is at the epicenter of the opioid crisis, with the third highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was performed using the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council database of all residents hospitalized for infective endocarditis (IE) in an acute care hospital from 1 January 2013 through 31 March 2017. Patients were separated into those with and those without substance use via diagnosis codes. The primary outcome was length of stay. Secondarily, we evaluated demographics, infection history, hospital charges, and insurance status. RESULTS: Of the 17 224 hospitalizations, 1921 (11.1%) were in patients with drug use-associated IE (DU-IE). Total quarterly IE admissions increased 20%, with a 6.5% increase in non-drug use-associated IE (non-DU-IE) admissions and a 238% increase in DU-IE admissions. In adjusted models, DU-IE was not associated with significant changes in length of stay (incidence rate ratio, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, .975-1.072; P = .36). Patients with DU-IE were predominantly insured by Medicaid (68.3% vs 13.4% for non-DU-IE), they had higher hospital charges ($86 622 vs $66 802), and they were more likely to leave against medical advice (15.7% vs 1.1%) (all P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates an increase in IE admissions, driven by an increase in admissions for DU-IE. The higher charges, proportion of patients on Medicaid, and rates of leaving against medical advice among the DU-IE group shows the downstream effects of the opioid crisis.

Health Policy Perspective: Medicaid and State Politics Beyond COVID.

The COVID-19 pandemic is poised to drastically alter the Medicaid program. While state Medicaid programs are currently expanding coverage policies and enrollment to address acute public health needs, states will soon face significant budget shortfalls. These impending changes may renew partisan debates about restrictive policies like work requirements, which generally require beneficiaries to verify their participation in certain activities-such as employment, job search, or training programs-in order to receive or retain coverage. We argue that restrictive Medicaid policies are driven, to a great extent, by political party affiliation, highlighting the outsized role of partisanship in Medicaid policy adoption. To combat these dynamics, additional efforts are needed to improve community-informed decision-making, strengthen evaluation approaches to tie evidence to policymaking, and boost participation in and understanding of the political processes that affect policy change.

Impact of a State Opioid Prescribing Limit and Electronic Medical Record Alert on Opioid Prescriptions: a Difference-in-Differences Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Prescribing limits are one policy strategy to reduce short-term opioid prescribing, but there is limited evidence of their impact. OBJECTIVE: Evaluate implementation of a state prescribing limit law and health system electronic medical record (EMR) alert on characteristics of new opioid prescriptions, refill rates, and clinical encounters. DESIGN: Difference-in-differences study comparing new opioid prescriptions from ambulatory practices in New Jersey (NJ) to controls in Pennsylvania (PA) from 1 year prior to the implementation of a NJ state prescribing limit (May 2016-May 2017) to 10 months after (May 2017-March 2018). PARTICIPANTS: Adults with new opioid prescriptions in an academic health system with practices in PA and NJ. INTERVENTIONS: State 5-day opioid prescribing limit plus health system and health system EMR alert. MAIN MEASURES: Changes in morphine milligram equivalents (MME) and tablet quantity per prescription, refills, and encounters, adjusted for patient and prescriber characteristics. KEY RESULTS: There were a total of 678 new prescriptions in NJ and 4638 in PA. Prior to the intervention, median MME/prescription was 225 mg in NJ and 150 mg in PA, and median quantity was 30 tablets in both. After implementation, median MME/prescription was 150 mg in both states, and median quantity was 20 in NJ and 30 in PA. In the adjusted model, there was a greater decrease in mean MME and tablet quantity in NJ relative to PA after implementation of the policy plus alert (- 82.99 MME/prescription, 95% CI - 148.15 to - 17.84 and - 10.41 tabs/prescription, 95% CI - 19.70 to - 1.13). There were no significant differences in rates of refills or encounters at 30 days based on exposure to the interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of a prescribing limit and EMR alert was associated with an approximately 22% greater decrease in opioid dose per new prescription in NJ compared with controls in PA. The combination of prescribing limits and alerts may be an effective strategy to influence prescriber behavior.

Characteristics of Twitter Use by State Medicaid Programs in the United States: Machine Learning Approach.

BACKGROUND: Twitter is a potentially valuable tool for public health officials and state Medicaid programs in the United States, which provide public health insurance to 72 million Americans. OBJECTIVE: We aim to characterize how Medicaid agencies and managed care organization (MCO) health plans are using Twitter to communicate with the public. METHODS: Using Twitter's public application programming interface, we collected 158,714 public posts ("tweets") from active Twitter profiles of state Medicaid agencies and MCOs, spanning March 2014 through June 2019. Manual content analyses identified 5 broad categories of content, and these coded tweets were used to train supervised machine learning algorithms to classify all collected posts. RESULTS: We identified 15 state Medicaid agencies and 81 Medicaid MCOs on Twitter. The mean number of followers was 1784, the mean number of those followed was 542, and the mean number of posts was 2476. Approximately 39% of tweets came from just 10 accounts. Of all posts, 39.8% (63,168/158,714) were classified as general public health education and outreach; 23.5% (n=37,298) were about specific Medicaid policies, programs, services, or events; 18.4% (n=29,203) were organizational promotion of staff and activities; and 11.6% (n=18,411) contained general news and news links. Only 4.5% (n=7142) of posts were responses to specific questions, concerns, or complaints from the public. CONCLUSIONS: Twitter has the potential to enhance community building, beneficiary engagement, and public health outreach, but appears to be underutilized by the Medicaid program.

Management of spontaneous temporal bone cerebrospinal fluid leak: A 30-year experience.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to describe the incidence of and our long-term results in the management of spontaneous temporal bone CSF leak and to determine if there is any association with an increase in body mass index (BMI). METHODS: This was an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved retrospective review of 58 patients who underwent repair of spontaneous temporal bone CSF leaks by a single surgeon at a tertiary care academic medical center between 1988 and 2017. Patients with CSF leaks due to trauma, iatrogenic injury, or chronic infection were excluded. Surgical approaches included middle cranial fossa, transmastoid, or a combination of both. Cases were divided into three decades. Patient demographics, clinical features, audiologic results, imaging studies, operative findings, complications, and long-term results were reviewed with a specific emphasis on the potential correlation with BMI. RESULTS: The average BMI was 32. There was a statistically significant increase in BMI between the two most recent decades (p = 0.044). The middle cranial fossa was the most commonly utilized approach. Multiple tegmen defects were often noted on imaging and intraoperatively. CONCLUSION: There is an increase in the incidence of spontaneous CSF leaks possibly associated with an increase in BMI in the United States over the last 30 years.

Impact of an interprofessional transition of care service on 30-day hospital reutilizations.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of an interprofessional Transitions of Care (TOC) service on 30-day hospital reutilization inclusive of hospital readmissions and ED visits. This was a retrospective cohort study including patients discharged from an academic medical center between September 2013 and October 2014. Patients scheduled for a hospital follow-up visit in the post-acute care clinic (PACC) were included in the intervention group and patients without a post-discharge interprofessional TOC service were included in the comparison group. The intervention included a hospital follow-up visit with an interprofessional healthcare team. The primary composite outcome was hospital reutilization, defined as a hospital readmission or ED visit within 30 days of the discharge date. Overall, 330 patients were included in each group. In the intention-to-treat analysis, the primary composite outcome was not significantly different between groups (16.97% vs. 19.39%, P = 0.4195) whereas in the per-protocol analysis (all patients who showed to their PACC appointment), the primary outcome was significantly different in favor of the intervention group (9.28% vs. 19.39%, P = 0.0009). When components were analyzed separately, there was a statistically significant difference in favor of intervention group for hospital readmissions, but there was no difference for ED visits. This study demonstrates that an outpatient interprofessional TOC service with patient engagement from a team of nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and social workers may reduce 30-day hospital readmissions but may not impact 30-day ED visits.

Insurance Type and Access to Health Care Providers and Appointments Under the Affordable Care Act.

BACKGROUND: Millions of adults have gained insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, disparities in access to care persist. OBJECTIVE: This study examined differences in access to primary and specialty care among patients insured by private individual market insurance plans (both on-exchange and off-exchange) and Medicaid compared with those with employer-sponsored insurance. RESEARCH DESIGN: Using data from the 2014 and 2015 California Health Interview Survey, logistic regression analyses were used to calculate the odds of being unable to access primary care providers, access specialty care providers and receive a needed doctor's appointment in a timely manner, with insurance type serving as the independent variable. Interaction terms examined if the expiration of the ACA's optional Medicaid primary care fee increase in 2014 modified any of these associations. RESULTS: Findings showed poorer access to providers among those insured through Medicaid and the individual market (whether purchased through the state's health insurance exchange or off-exchange) relative to employer-based insurance. Poor access to primary care providers was seen among private coverage purchased via exchanges, relative to private coverage purchased on the individual market. In addition, findings showed that reduction of Medicaid fees coincided with reduced ability to see primary care providers. However, a similar trend was seen among those with employer-based coverage, which suggests that this change may not be attributable to reductions in Medicaid fees. CONCLUSION: Despite ACA-related gains in insurance coverage, those with on-exchange and off-exchange individual private insurance plans and Medicaid encounter more barriers to care than those with employer-based insurance.

Why Effective Interventions Do Not Work for All Patients: Exploring Variation in Response to a Chronic Disease Management Intervention.

BACKGROUND: Half of all Americans have a chronic disease. Promoting healthy behaviors to decrease this burden is a national priority. A number of behavioral interventions have proven efficacy; yet even the most effective of these has high levels of nonresponse. OBJECTIVES: In this study, we explore variation in response to an evidence-based community health worker (CHW) intervention for chronic disease management. RESEARCH DESIGN: We used a convergent parallel design that combined a randomized controlled trial with a qualitative process evaluation that triangulated chart abstraction, in-depth interviews and participant observation. SUBJECTS: Eligible patients lived in a high-poverty region and were diagnosed with 2 or more of the following chronic diseases: diabetes, obesity, hypertension or tobacco dependence. There were 302 patients in the trial, 150 of whom were randomly assigned to the CHW intervention. Twenty patients and their CHWs were included in the qualitative evaluation. RESULTS: We found minimal differences between responders and nonresponders by sociodemographic or clinical characteristics. A qualitative process evaluation revealed that health behavior change was challenging for all patients and most experienced failure (ie, gaining weight or relapsing with cigarettes) along the way. Responders seemed to increase their resolve after failed attempts at health behavior change, while nonresponders became discouraged and "shut down." CONCLUSIONS: Failure is a common and consequential aspect of health behavior change; a deeper understanding of failure should inform chronic disease interventions.

Rideshare-Based Medical Transportation for Medicaid Patients and Primary Care Show Rates: A Difference-in-Difference Analysis of a Pilot Program.

BACKGROUND: Transportation to primary care is a well-documented barrier for patients with Medicaid, despite access to non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) benefits. Rideshare services, which offer greater convenience and lower cost, have been proposed as an NEMT alternative. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of rideshare-based medical transportation on the proportion of Medicaid patients attending scheduled primary care appointments. DESIGN: In one of two similar practices, all eligible Medicaid patients were offered rideshare-based transportation ("rideshare practice"). A difference-in-difference analytical approach using logistic regression with robust standard errors was employed to compare show rate changes between the rideshare practice and the practice where rideshare was not offered ("control practice"). PARTICIPANTS: Our study population included residents of West Philadelphia who were insured by Medicaid and were established patients at two academic general internal medicine practices located in the same building. INTERVENTION: We designed a rideshare-based transportation pilot intervention. Patients were offered the service during their reminder call 2 days before the appointment, and rides were prescheduled by research staff. Patients then called research staff to schedule their return trip home. MAIN MEASURES: We assessed the effect of offering rideshare-based transportation on appointment show rates by comparing the change in the average show rate for the rideshare practice, from the baseline period to the intervention period, with the change at the control practice. KEY RESULTS: At the control practice, the show rate declined from 60% (146/245) to 51% (34/67). At the rideshare practice, the show rate improved from 54% (72/134) to 68% (41/60). In the adjusted model, controlling for patient demographics and provider type, the odds of showing up for an appointment before and after the intervention increased 2.57 (1.10-6.00) times more in the rideshare practice than in the control practice. CONCLUSIONS: Results of this pilot program suggest that offering a rideshare-based transportation service can increase show rates to primary care for Medicaid patients.

An Automated Inpatient Split-dose Bowel Preparation System Improves Colonoscopy Quality and Reduces Repeat Procedures.

BACKGROUND/GOALS: Inpatient colonoscopy preparations are often inadequate, compromising patient safety and procedure quality, while resulting in greater hospital costs. The aims of this study were to: (1) design and implement an electronic inpatient split-dose bowel preparation order set; (2) assess the intervention's impact upon preparation adequacy, repeated colonoscopies, hospital days, and costs. STUDY: We conducted a single center prospective pragmatic quasiexperimental study of hospitalized adults undergoing colonoscopy. The experimental intervention was designed using DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) methodology. Prospective data collected over 12 months were compared with data from a historical preintervention cohort. The primary outcome was bowel preparation quality and secondary outcomes included number of repeated procedures, hospital days, and costs. RESULTS: On the basis of a Delphi method and DMAIC process, we created an electronic inpatient bowel preparation order set inclusive of a split-dose bowel preparation algorithm, automated orders for rescue medications, and nursing bowel preparation checks. The analysis data set included 969 patients, 445 (46%) in the postintervention group. The adequacy of bowel preparation significantly increased following intervention (86% vs. 43%; P<0.01) and proportion of repeated procedures decreased (2.0% vs. 4.6%; P=0.03). Mean hospital days from bowel preparation initiation to discharge decreased from 8.0 to 6.9 days (P=0.02). The intervention resulted in an estimated 1-year cost-savings of $46,076 based on a reduction in excess hospital days associated with repeated and delayed procedures. CONCLUSIONS: Our interdisciplinary initiative targeting inpatient colonoscopy preparations significantly improved quality and reduced repeat procedures, and hospital days. Other institutions should consider utilizing this framework to improve inpatient colonoscopy value.

The Affordable Care Act Attenuates Financial Strain According to Poverty Level.

We use data from the 2011-2016 National Health Interview Survey to examine how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has influenced disparities in health care-related financial strain, access to care, and utilization of services by categories of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). We use multivariable regression analyses to determine the ACA's effects on these outcome measures, as well as to determine how changes in these measures varied across different FPL levels. We find that the national implementation of the ACA's insurance expansion provisions in 2014 was associated with improvements in health care-related financial strain, access, and utilization. Relative to adults earning more than 400% of the FPL, the largest effects were observed among those earning between 0% to 124% and 125% to 199% of the FPL after the implementation of the ACA. Both groups experienced reductions in disparities in financial strain and uninsurance relative to the highest FPL group. Overall, the ACA has attenuated health care-related financial strain and improved access to and the utilization of health services for low- and middle-income adults who have traditionally not met income eligibility requirements for public insurance programs. Policy changes that would replace the ACA with less generous age-based tax subsidies and reductions in Medicaid funding could reverse these gains.

Second opinions from urologists for prostate cancer: Who gets them, why, and their link to treatment.

BACKGROUND: Cancer patients are encouraged to obtain second opinions before starting treatment. Little is known about men with localized prostate cancer who seek second opinions, the reasons why, and the association with treatment and quality of care. METHODS: We surveyed men who were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer in the greater Philadelphia area from 2012 to 2014. Men were asked if they obtained a second opinion from a urologist, and the reasons why. We used multivariable logistic regression models to evaluate the relationship between second opinions and definitive prostate cancer treatment and perceived quality of care. RESULTS: A total of 2386 men responded to the survey (adjusted response rate, 51.1%). After applying exclusion criteria, the final analytic cohort included 2365 respondents. Of these, 40% obtained second opinions, most commonly because they wanted more information about their cancer (50.8%) and wanted to be seen by the best doctor (46.3%). Overall, obtaining second opinions was not associated with definitive treatment or perceived quality of cancer care. Men who sought second opinions because they were dissatisfied with their initial urologist were less likely to receive definitive treatment (odds ratio, 0.49; 95% confidence interval, 0.32-0.73), and men who wanted more information about treatment were less likely to report excellent quality of cancer care (odds ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.49-0.99) compared with men who did not receive a second opinion. CONCLUSIONS: Although a large proportion of men with localized prostate cancer obtained a second opinion, the reasons for doing so were not associated with treatment choice or perceived quality of cancer care. Future study is needed to determine when second opinions contribute to increasing the value of cancer care. Cancer 2017;123:1027-34. © 2016 American Cancer Society.