Association between vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 infection and mortality.

Vitamin D deficiency has long been associated with reduced immune function that can lead to viral infection. Several studies have shown that Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increases the risk of infection with COVID-19. However, it is unknown if treatment with Vitamin D can reduce the associated risk of COVID-19 infection, which is the focus of this study. In the population of US veterans, we show that Vitamin D2 and D3 fills were associated with reductions in COVID-19 infection of 28% and 20%, respectively [(D3 Hazard Ratio (HR) = 0.80, [95% CI 0.77, 0.83]), D2 HR = 0.72, [95% CI 0.65, 0.79]]. Mortality within 30-days of COVID-19 infection was similarly 33% lower with Vitamin D3 and 25% lower with D2 (D3 HR = 0.67, [95% CI 0.59, 0.75]; D2 HR = 0.75, [95% CI 0.55, 1.04]). We also find that after controlling for vitamin D blood levels, veterans receiving higher dosages of Vitamin D obtained greater benefits from supplementation than veterans receiving lower dosages. Veterans with Vitamin D blood levels between 0 and 19 ng/ml exhibited the largest decrease in COVID-19 infection following supplementation. Black veterans received greater associated COVID-19 risk reductions with supplementation than White veterans. As a safe, widely available, and affordable treatment, Vitamin D may help to reduce the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

System-Level Health-Care Integration and the Costs of Cancer Care Across the Disease Continuum.

PURPOSE: Policy reforms in the Affordable Care Act encourage health care integration to improve quality and lower costs. We examined the association between system-level integration and longitudinal costs of cancer care. METHODS: We used linked SEER-Medicare data to identify patients age 66 to 99 years diagnosed with prostate, bladder, esophageal, pancreatic, lung, liver, kidney, colorectal, breast, or ovarian cancer from 2007 to 2012. We attributed each patient to one or more phases of care (ie, initial, continuing, and end of life) according to time from diagnosis until death or end of study interval. For each phase, we aggregated all claims with the primary cancer diagnosis and identified patients treated in an integrated delivery network (IDN), as defined by the Becker Hospital Review list of the top 100 most integrated health delivery systems. We then determined if care provided in an IDN was associated with decreased payments across cancers and for each individual cancer by phase and across phases. RESULTS: We identified 428,300 patients diagnosed with one of 10 common cancers. Overall, there were no differences in phase-based payments between IDNs and non-IDNs. Average adjusted annual payments by phase for IDN versus non-IDNs were as follows: initial, $14,194 versus $14,421, respectively ( P = .672); continuing, $2,051 versus $2,099 ( P = .566); and end of life, $16,257 versus $16,232 ( P = .948). However, in select cancers, we observed lower payments in IDNs. For bladder cancer, payments at the end of life were lower for IDNs ($11,041 v $12,331; P = .008). Of the four cancers with the lowest 5-year survival rates (ie, pancreatic, lung, esophageal, and liver), average expenditures during the initial and continuing-care phases were lower for patients with liver cancer treated in IDNs. CONCLUSION: For patients with one of 10 common malignancies, treatment in an IDN generally is not associated with lower costs during any phase of cancer care.

Moneyball in Medicare.

US policymakers place high priority on tying Medicare payments to the value of care delivered. A critical part of this effort is the Hospital Value-based Purchasing Program (HVBP), which rewards or penalizes hospitals based on their quality and episode-based costs of care and incentivizes integration between hospitals and post-acute care providers. Within HVBP, each patient affects hospital performance on a variety of quality and spending measures, and performance translates directly to changes in program points and ultimately dollars. In short, hospital revenue from a patient consists not only of the DRG payment, but also of that patient's marginal future reimbursement. We estimate the magnitude of the marginal future reimbursement for individual patients across each type of quality and performance measure. We describe how those incentives differ across hospitals, including integrated and safety-net hospitals. We find evidence that hospitals improved their performance over time in the areas where they have the highest marginal incentives to improve care, and that integrated hospitals responded more than non-integrated hospitals.

Effects of Higher Quality of Care on Initiation of Long-term Dialysis in Patients With CKD and Diabetes.

BACKGROUND: The burden of diabetes-related chronic kidney disease (CKD) on individuals and society is increasing, shifting attention toward improving the quality of care for patients with CKD and diabetes. We assessed the quality of CKD care and its association with long-term dialysis, acute kidney injury (AKI), and death. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study (2004-2011). SETTING & PARTICIPANTS: Adults in Taiwan with incident CKD enrolled in the Longitudinal Cohort of Diabetes Patients. PREDICTORS: 3 CKD-care quality indicators based on medical and pharmacy claims data were studied: prescription of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors, testing for proteinuria, and nutritional guidance. Each was examined individually, and all were summed into an overall quality score. OUTCOMES: The primary outcome was initiation of long-term dialysis therapy. Secondary outcomes were hospitalization due to AKI and death from any cause. MEASUREMENTS: Using instrumental variables related to the quality indicators to minimize both unmeasured and measured confounding, we fit a 2-stage residual inclusion model to estimate HRs and 95% CIs for each outcome. RESULTS: Among the 63,260 patients enrolled, 43.9% were prescribed renin-angiotensin system inhibitors, 60.6% were tested for proteinuria, and 13.4% received nutritional guidance. During a median follow-up of 37.9 months, 1,471 patients started long-term dialysis therapy, 2,739 patients were hospitalized due to AKI, and 4,407 patients died. Higher overall quality scores were associated with lower hazards for long-term dialysis in instrumental variable analyses (HR of 0.62 [95% CI, 0.40-0.98] per 1-point greater score) and hospitalization due to AKI (HR of 0.69 [95% CI, 0.50-0.96] per 1-point greater score). The hazard for all-cause death was nonsignificantly lower (HR of 0.80 [95% CI, 0.62-1.03] per 1-point greater score). LIMITATIONS: Potential misclassification and uncontrolled confounding by indication. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest potential opportunities to improve long-term outcomes among patients with diabetes and CKD by improving the quality of their CKD care.

Informal care and caregiver's health.

This study aims to measure the causal effect of informal caregiving on the health and health care use of women who are caregivers, using instrumental variables. We use data from South Korea, where daughters and daughters-in-law are the prevalent source of caregivers for frail elderly parents and parents-in-law. A key insight of our instrumental variable approach is that having a parent-in-law with functional limitations increases the probability of providing informal care to that parent-in-law, but a parent-in-law's functional limitation does not directly affect the daughter-in-law's health. We compare results for the daughter-in-law and daughter samples to check the assumption of the excludability of the instruments for the daughter sample. Our results show that providing informal care has significant adverse effects along multiple dimensions of health for daughter-in-law and daughter caregivers in South Korea.

Declining fertility and the use of cesarean delivery: evidence from a population-based study in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that declining fertility would affect the number of cesarean sections (c-sections) on maternal demand, but not medically indicated c-sections. DATA SOURCES: The 1996-2004 National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan for all singleton deliveries. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective population-based, longitudinal study. Estimation was performed using multinomial probit models. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Results revealed that declining fertility had a significant positive effect on the probability of having a c-section on maternal request but not medically indicated c-section. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings offer a precautionary note to countries experiencing a fertility decline. Policies to contain the rise of c-sections should understand the role of women's preferences, especially regarding cesarean deliveries on maternal request.

Complementary and alternative medicine use in musculoskeletal disorders: does medical skepticism matter?

Medical skepticism is the reservation about the ability of conventional medical care to significantly improve health. Individuals with musculoskeletal disorders seeing specialists usually experience higher levels of disability; therefore it is expected they might be more skeptical of current treatment and thus more likely to try Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). The goal of this study was to define these relationships. These data were drawn from a cross-sectional survey from two cohorts: those seeing specialists (n=1,344) and non-specialists (n=724). Site-level fixed effects logistic regression models were used to test associations between medical skepticism and 10 CAM use categories. Some form of CAM was used by 88% of the sample. Increased skepticism was associated with one CAM category for the non-specialist group and six categories for the specialist group. Increased medical skepticism is associated with CAM use, but medical skepticism is more often associated with CAM use for those seeing specialists.