Public Policy & Medical Economics

Before undergoing surgery, patients often go through a number of tests: blood work, sometimes a chest X-ray, perhaps tests to measure heart and lung function.... Read more

(HealthDay)—The time and financial costs associated with participating in the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) are considerable, according to a study published online May 14 in JAMA Health Forum.... Read more

Two years ago, the Veterans Affairs healthcare system (VA) began rolling out a new benefit, enabling Veterans to receive urgent care from a network of community providers—rather than visiting a VA emergency department or clinic. Progress toward expanding community care services for Veterans is the focus of a special supplement... Read more

Among cancer patients with health coverage in Southern California, those who were diagnosed and treated at Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care organization, had better survival rates, especially Black and Latino patients, according to Kaiser Permanente research published in The American Journal of Managed Care.... Read more

While cancer patients have experienced accelerated treatment timelines, receipt of definitive treatment for minorities and minority-serving hospitals in expansion states did not change compared to those in in non-expansion states.... Read more

For patients seen at a urology clinic, patient satisfaction scores vary by insurance status—with higher scores for patients on Medicare and commercial insurance, but lower scores for those on Medicaid, reports a study in Urology Practice, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in... Read more

The question of who speaks for patients with traumatic brain injuries when considering medical decisions is the subject of a commentary in the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience by Marie-Christine Nizzi, a research associate in the Program in Cognitive Science.... Read more

A new study from the Harvard GenderSci Lab in the journal Human Fertility, "The Future of Sperm: A Biovariability Framework for Understanding Global Sperm Count Trends" questions the panic over apparent trends of declining human sperm count.... Read more

Twenty dollars a month might not seem like a lot to pay for health insurance. But for people getting by on $15,000 a year, it's enough to make some drop their coverage—especially if they're healthy, a new study of Medicaid expansion participants in Michigan finds.... Read more

Countries around the world are racing against time to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus.... Read more

Many American workers remain in jobs they'd rather leave—simply because they don't want to lose their health insurance, a new Gallup poll reveals.... Read more

A world-first Australian study has shown that broad access to hepatitis C testing and treatment in prisons halves the number of new infections in that setting.... Read more

Close to 40 million Magnetic Resonance Imaging procedures are performed annually. These MRIs enable doctors to peer deep inside the body, helping them to diagnose ailments or diseases in a non-invasive way.... Read more

Therapists and other behavioral health care providers cut hours, reduced staffs and turned away patients during the pandemic as more Americans experienced depression symptoms and drug overdoses, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.... Read more

A new study from the University of Bath School of Management, TED University in Turkey and Wayne State University in the United States has identified how to radically improve the delivery of chemotherapy treatment to cancer patients while reducing the burden on nursing staff with a new scheduling model.... Read more