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What We're Reading: Missouri's PDMP; Healthcare Pricing Growth; Hospital Rankings Postponed
Missouri Becomes 50th State to Create Drug Monitoring Program
An executive order from Missouri’s governor has made it the last state to create a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP), according to the Associated Press. These programs have been instituted across the United States in an effort to track prescriptions and make it easier to spot patients who are doctor-shopping to access more opioids or doctors overprescribing the drugs, but Missouri’s lawmakers consistently failed to agree on a program. Some counties had joined an initiative to create a patchwork PDMP, but the unexpected order from Governor Eric Greitens will cover the entire state and could go into effect within a month.
Report Finds Healthcare Pricing Increases Slowest Since June 2016
A new report from the Altarum Institute finds that healthcare prices continue to increase, but at a slower rate than in previous months. Modern Healthcare states that the report indicated healthcare pricing rose by 1.6% in May, which is the lowest growth rate since June 2016, and hospital prices are growing at a slightly slower rate. The report attributes this curbed growth to continued cost-cutting measures by hospitals and the influence of increased price transparency and consumer price shopping. “All told, it is difficult to imagine healthcare prices accelerating anytime soon,” the study concluded.
US News & World Report to Delay Release of Hospital Rankings
STAT reports that US News & World Report will delay the publication of its annual hospital rankings from August 1 to August 8 due to the detection of data errors. According to an e-mail that was sent to participating hospitals and obtained by STAT, the errors were related to the new methodology used to judge the hospitals, which considers patients’ socioeconomic status and other factors that could impact outcomes. “While these changes … allow us to better assess hospital care, they are complex to implement and we discovered errors late in the process,” the e-mail explained.
Urticaria Diagnosis Challenged by Overlapping Pruritic Skin Conditions
April 23rd 2025Urticaria is complicated to diagnose by its symptomatic overlap with other skin conditions and the frequent misclassification in literature of distinct pathologies like vasculitic urticaria and bullous pemphigus.
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New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
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Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
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ACOs’ Focus on Rooting Out Fraud Aligns With CMS Vision Under Oz
April 23rd 2025Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are increasingly playing the role of data sleuths as they identify and report trends of anomalous billing in hopes of salvaging their shared savings. This mission dovetails with that of CMS, which under the new administration plans to prioritize rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.
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