Palliative and hospice care services produce well-known benefits for patients living with serious illness and for their families. Benefits include improved quality of life and reduced symptom burden, spiritual and emotional distress, and caregiver distress.
Financial barriers to behavioral health integration in Oregon Medicaid accountable care organizations (ACOs) limit opportunities to expand integrated care, but state and organizational opportunities exist.
Evaluation of cancer patients’ quality of life at admission enabled improvement of their satisfaction with received care at discharge.
Adherence to newly initiated biologic therapy for rheumatoid arthritis is important for long-term adherence.
From the Adult Diabetes and Clinical Research sections, Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Health Plans Continue to Seek Methods to Curtail Cancer Costs
With the prognosis for many cancers improving, we are seeing an appropriate sharpening of focus on the cardiovascular risks of patients who have survived cancer or are being treated for cancer, as well as a growing recognition of the impact this competing morbidity has on both short- and long-term health outcomes.
This study highlights disparities in care for diabetes and hypertension for individuals with serious mental illness compared with the general Medicaid and Medicare populations.
Patients with inadequate response to depression treatment used increased resources, were less likely to be employed, and had more presenteeism than those with treatment response.
Integration of written-prescription data into medication adherence measures doubled the number of patients identified as nonadherent and improved prediction of follow-up LDL cholesterol.