Impact of Social Needs Navigation on Utilization Among High Utilizers in a Large Integrated Health System: a Quasi-experimental Study.

BACKGROUND: Programs addressing social determinants of health for high-utilizing patients are gaining interest among health systems as an avenue to promote health and decrease utilization. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate impacts of a social needs screening and navigation program for adult predicted high utilizers on total medical visit utilization. DESIGN: A prospective, quasi-experimental study using an intent-to-treat propensity-weighted difference-in-differences approach. Stratified analyses assessed intervention effects among three low-socioeconomic status sub-samples: patients in low-income areas, in low-education areas, and with Medicaid insurance. PARTICIPANTS: Predicted high utilizers-patients predicted to be in the highest 1% for total utilization in a large integrated health system. INTERVENTION: A telephonic social needs screening and navigation program. MAIN MEASURES: Primary difference-in-difference analyses compared total visit count utilization, including outpatient, emergency department (ED), and inpatient utilization, between the intervention and control groups at both in-network and out-of-network facilities. Prevalence of social needs among sample patients and their connection rates to social needs resources are also described. KEY RESULTS: The study included 34,225 patients (7107 intervention, 27,118 control). Most (53%) patients screened reported social needs, but only a minority (10%) of those with a need were able to connect with resources to address these needs. Primary analysis found total utilization visits decreased 2.2% (95% CI - 4.5%, 0.1%; p = 0.058) in the intervention group. Stratified analyses showed decreases in total utilization for all low-socioeconomic status subgroups receiving the intervention compared with controls: - 7.0% (95% CI - 11.9%, - 1.9%; p = 0.008) in the low-income area group, - 11.5% (- 17.6%, 5.0%; p < 0.001) in the low-education area group, and - 12.1% (- 18.1%, - 5.6%; p < 0.001) in the Medicaid group. CONCLUSIONS: Social needs navigation programs for high-utilizing patients may have modest effects on utilization for the population overall. However, significant decreases in utilization were found among low-socioeconomic status patients more likely to experience social needs.

Segmentation of High-Cost Adults in an Integrated Healthcare System Based on Empirical Clustering of Acute and Chronic Conditions.

BACKGROUND: High-cost patients are a frequent focus of improvement projects based on primary care and other settings. Efforts to characterize high-cost, high-need patients are needed to inform care planning, but such efforts often rely on a priori assumptions, masking underlying complexities of a heterogenous population. OBJECTIVE: To define recognizable subgroups of patients among high-cost adults based on clinical conditions, and describe their survival and future spending. DESIGN: Retrospective observational cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: Within a large integrated delivery system with 2.7 million adult members, we selected the top 1% of continuously enrolled adults with respect to total healthcare expenditures during 2010. MAIN MEASURES: We used latent class analysis to identify clusters of alike patients based on 53 hierarchical condition categories. Prognosis as measured by healthcare spending and survival was assessed through 2014 for the resulting classes of patients. RESULTS: Among 21,183 high-cost adults, seven clinically distinctive subgroups of patients emerged. Classes included end-stage renal disease (12% of high-cost population), cardiopulmonary conditions (17%), diabetes with multiple comorbidities (8%), acute illness superimposed on chronic conditions (11%), conditions requiring highly specialized care (14%), neurologic and catastrophic conditions (5%), and patients with few comorbidities (the largest class, 33%). Over 4 years of follow-up, 6566 (31%) patients died, and survival in the classes ranged from 43 to 88%. Spending regressed to the mean in all classes except the ESRD and diabetes with multiple comorbidities groups. CONCLUSIONS: Data-driven characterization of high-cost adults yielded clinically intuitive classes that were associated with survival and reflected markedly different healthcare needs. Relatively few high-cost patients remain persistently high cost over 4 years. Our results suggest that high-cost patients, while not a monolithic group, can be segmented into few subgroups. These subgroups may be the focus of future work to understand appropriateness of care and design interventions accordingly.

CURB-65 Performance Among Admitted and Discharged Emergency Department Patients With Community-acquired Pneumonia.

OBJECTIVES: Pneumonia severity tools were primarily developed in cohorts of hospitalized patients, limiting their applicability to the emergency department (ED). We describe current community ED admission practices and examine the accuracy of the CURB-65 to predict 30-day mortality for patients, either discharged or admitted with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). METHODS: A retrospective, observational study of adult CAP encounters in 14 community EDs within an integrated healthcare system. We calculated CURB-65 scores for all encounters and described the use of hospitalization, stratified by each score (0-5). We then used each score as a cutoff to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value (NPV), positive likelihood ratios, and negative likelihood ratios for predicting 30-day mortality. RESULTS: The sample included 21,183 ED encounters for CAP (7,952 discharged and 13,231 admitted). The C-statistic describing the accuracy of CURB-65 for predicting 30-day mortality in the full sample was 0.761 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.747-0.774). The C-statistic was 0.864 (95% CI, 0.821-0.906) among patients discharged from the ED compared with 0.689 (95% CI, 0.672-0.705) among patients who were admitted. Among all ED encounters a CURB-65 threshold of ≥1 was 92.8% sensitive and 38.0% specific for predicting mortality, with a 99.9% NPV. Among all encounters, 62.5% were admitted, including 36.2% of those at lowest risk (CURB-65 = 0). CONCLUSIONS: CURB-65 had very good accuracy for predicting 30-day mortality among patients discharged from the ED. This severity tool may help ED providers risk stratify patients to assist with disposition decisions and identify unwarranted variation in patient care.

Oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus in an immunocompetent model of MUC1-positive or MUC1-null pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is a promising oncolytic agent against various malignancies. Here, for the first time, we tested VSV in vitro and in vivo in a clinically relevant, immunocompetent mouse model of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). Our system allows the study of virotherapy against PDA in the context of overexpression (80% of PDA patients) or no expression of human mucin 1 (MUC1), a major marker for poor prognosis in patients. In vitro, we tested three VSV recombinants, wild-type VSV, VSV-green fluorescent protein (VSV-GFP), and a safe oncolytic VSV-ΔM51-GFP, against five mouse PDA cell lines that either expressed human MUC1 or were MUC1 null. All viruses demonstrated significant oncolytic abilities independent of MUC1 expression, although VSV-ΔM51-GFP was somewhat less effective in two PDA cell lines. In vivo administration of VSV-ΔM51-GFP resulted in significant reduction of tumor growth for tested mouse PDA xenografts (+MUC1 or MUC1 null), and antitumor efficacy was further improved when the virus was combined with the chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine. The antitumor effect was transient in all tested groups. The developed system can be used to study therapies involving various oncolytic viruses and chemotherapeutics, with the goal of inducing tumor-specific immunity while preventing premature virus clearance.

Donor heart preservation with pinacidil: the role of the mitochondrial K ATP channel.

BACKGROUND: Pinacidil solutions have been shown to have significant cardioprotective effects. Pinacidil activates both sarcolemmal and mitochondrial potassium-adenosine triphosphate (K(ATP)) channels. This study was undertaken to compare pinacidil solution with University of Wisconsin (UW) solution and to determine if the protective effect of pinacidil involved mitochondrial or sarcolemmal K(ATP) channels. METHODS: Thirty-two rabbit hearts received one of four preservation solutions in a Langendorff apparatus: (1) UW; (2) a solution containing 0.5 mmol/L pinacidil; (3) pinacidil with Hoechst-Marion-Roussel 1098 (HMR-1098), a sarcolemmal channel blocker; and (4) pinacidil with 5-hydroxydecanote, a mitochondrial channel blocker. Left ventricular pressure-volume curves were generated by an intraventricular balloon. All hearts were placed in cold storage for 8 hours, followed by 60 minutes of reperfusion. RESULTS: Postischemic developed pressure was better preserved by pinacidil than by UW. This cardioprotective effect was eliminated by 5-hydroxydecanote and diminished by HMR-1098. Diastolic compliance was better preserved by pinacidil when compared with UW. This protection was abolished by the addition of 5-hydroxydecanote and moderately decreased by HMR-1098. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support the superiority of pinacidil over UW after 8 hours of storage. The cardioprotective role of pinacidil is mediated primarily by the mitochondrial K(ATP) channel.