{"title":"Palliative care improves quality of life and symptoms.","authors":"Jan Greene","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Offering emotional and physical comfort to seriously ill and dying people-the heart of palliative care-certainly seems like the right thing to do. Advocates think so and there's now a body of evidence to support the provision of palliative care services, especially in hospitals.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Community health workers improve outcomes, reduce costs.","authors":"Sarah Kwon","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Community health workers liaise between underserved populations and clinicians, help patients and resources to manage disease, and provide health education, informal counseling, and social support. Interest in community health workers is shifting away from narrowly focused intervention on a single disease toward care coordination of multiple chronic conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"20-21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"California program cuts maternal deaths in half.","authors":"Joseph Burns","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Maternity care in the United States is an international disgrace, but not in California thanks to the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative. Each month, the CMQCC combs through month-old birth certificate data and hospital-provided discharge records for both mothers and babies looking for data to improve pregnancy-related outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"HIV/AIDS treatment drastically reduces mortality and helps limit transmission.","authors":"Frank Diamond","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Death rates from HIV/AIDS plummeted in the United States from 41,699 in 1995 to 6,456 in 2015. Today, people newly diagnosed with HIV who take their medicine can survive for decades, not just months or years. It's one of medicine's great achievements.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"16-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"There's a Better Way to Do Step Therapy.","authors":"Joseph Burns","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Starting in January, CMS will let Medicare Advantage plans use step therapy, a cost control strategy sometimes called \"fail first.\" Patient advocates are wary, arguing that the fail first rules should be available online and decisions on physician appeals should be made within 72 hours-and in a day when it is an emergency.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"12-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Different Lens: Evaluating Quality of Care From the Consumer Perspective.","authors":"Ellen Harrison","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>CMS continues to push on measuring and reporting information from the consumer perspective for Medicare Advantage and Part D contracts. Others will follow, and we can expect more emphasis on member-reported outcomes and experience measures across all lines of business.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nurse practitioners provide quality primary care at a lower cost than physicians.","authors":"Jan Greene","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The growing need for primary care providers has opened the door for nurse practitioners to fill the void. Nursing students are rushing to get nurse practitioner degrees, and researchers are working to keep pace with studies. Most of the results provide evidence for expanded use of nurse practitioners in a variety of settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bundled payments for joint replacement reduce expenditures, don't compromise quality.","authors":"Robert Calandra","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Bundled payments work for hip and knee replacements for several reasons. The surgeries themselves are now fairly routine. For most patients, the recovery is usually predictable. There are also some golden opportunities for reducing expenditures that don't compromise care.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"30-31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Antiviral drugs have made hepatitis C eminently treatable.","authors":"Susan Ladika","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Direct-acting antiviral drugs have revolutionized the treatment of hepatitis C and have some enthusiastic experts even go so far as to talk about eradicating the disease. The dark cloud in this otherwise rosy picture has been the price tags affixed to these drugs.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"23-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Acute Kidney Injury: Increasingly Common, Often Insidious, Possibly Deadly. But Worth Testing For?","authors":"Deborah Borfitz","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Tests for AKI biomarkers would be used more widely if their role were better defined, say their proponents. Researchers are tackling the possibilities from many angles. In addition to detecting kidney injury sooner, AKI biomarkers might also be used to assess the riskiness of common kidney stressors.</p>","PeriodicalId":39329,"journal":{"name":"Managed Care","volume":"27 11","pages":"39-41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36845172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}