A Health Podyssey

Alan Weil interviews Aliza Gordon from Elevance Health on her and coauthors' recently published paper in the September 2022 issue of Health Affairs comparing trends in provider charges for surprise billing between two states, New York and California, which have different mechanisms for setting surprise bill payment levels.Order the September 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on nurses, care delivery, pharmaceuticals, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Alan Weil interviews Eric Roberts from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health to discuss his and colleagues recent research comparing the experiences of dual eligibles enrolled in D-SNPs with those enrolled in Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare.Read the full transcript.Order the September 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on nurses, care delivery, pharmaceuticals, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil interviews Michael Barnett from Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health to discuss Michael and coauthors recent research on assessing trends in the supply of mental health care practitioners, including psychiatrists and nurse practitioners serving Medicare enrollees.Order the September 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on nurses, care delivery, pharmaceuticals, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

On our 100th episode, Leemore Dafny from Harvard Business School joins Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil to discuss her recent research published in Health Affairs examining donations made by pharmaceutical manufacturers to patient assistance charities based on an analysis of drug spending among Medicare Advantage enrollees. Order the September 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on nurses, care delivery, pharmaceuticals, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Read the Full Episode Transcript here.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Today, Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil takes an Excursion with Dr. Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health.Dr. Ajayi is a primary care doctor and an entrepreneur. She co-founded a company with a multi-billion-dollar valuation based on meeting the needs of patients, many with quite complex needs, in their communities.Listen to Alan Weil and Toyin Ajayi talk about building a health care business that focuses on historically underserved populations, what inspired Dr. Ajayi's work, what challenges she has overcome, where Cityblock is heading, and more. Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

As the COVID-19 epidemic hit the United States, New Jersey was an early hotspot with medical offices closing down, people encouraged to stay at home, and extreme pressure on the health system.The state of New Jersey adopted emergency rules to permit providers from out of state to care for people in New Jersey. This had many implications.Ann Nguyen from Rutgers University joins A Health Podyssey to discuss what happens when you suspend interstate barriers to medical practice.Nguyen and coauthors published a paper in the August edition of Health Affairs exploring the results of a survey administered to practitioners who received licenses through New Jersey's COVID-19 temporary emergency licensure program.They found that these practitioners met two very important needs: urgent hospital-based care and telehealth-based care. Order the August 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on spending, payment, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Today, nearly 40 million Americans are living with type 2 diabetes, which is more than a 40 percent increase from just a decade ago.Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Alaskan native adults are much more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to develop diabetes and to die from the disease. Even as there have been important medical advances associated with diabetes, the burden of the disease continues to climb.How can we address the growing burden of diabetes?Mohammed Ali from Emory University joins A Health Podyssey to discuss his overview he and coauthors published in the July 2022 edition Health Affairs on diabetes.Ali and coauthors report that the fragmented health care system in the US is a primary reason for our poor diabetes outcomes and high levels of inequity.Ali's overview was part of a six-paper cluster of research on type 2 diabetes, all of which were published in the July 2022 issue of Health Affairs.Order the July 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on type 2 diabetes and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Paid sick leave is a benefit many of us take as a given, but almost one-quarter of workers in the United States don't get any paid sick leave at all.That puts the employee in a very difficult position - reluctant to not go to work even when sick because they can't afford to lose their wages. Other high-income countries mandate sick leave and in 2012 Connecticut became the first state to adopt a sick leave mandate.Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia have followed suit.It might not be surprising to learn that paid sick leave mandates reduce the likelihood of people going to work when they're sick. But do these mandates affect the use of emergency room?Yanlei Ma from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute joins A Health Podyssey to discusses the relationship between state paid sick leave mandates and emergency department use.Ma and coauthors published a paper in the August 2022 edition of Health Affairs examining the effect of state-level mandatory sick leave policies on emergency department visits. Listen to learn about the relationship they found.Order the August 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on spending, payments, and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

In the United States we have multiple commercial health insurers, each with their own rules regarding filing and documenting claims for payment.Medicare and Medicaid have their own rules and both of those programs rely heavily on insurers who impose their own rules. All this adds up to is significant burden on health care providers who rely upon staff and technology to navigate this complex system.While there are various estimates, all told administrative costs account for at least a few hundred billion dollars of health care spending each year. This figure is much lower in other countries.Barak Richman from Duke University joins A Health Podyssey to discuss how insurance-related health spending in the United States compares to that in other countries.Richman and coauthors published a paper in the August issue of Health Affairs comparing administrative spending in five countries with spending in the United States. In the paper, they provide insights for reasons for the differences.Order the August 2022 issue of Health Affairs.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

There are currently an estimated 37.3 Americans living with diabetes, more than a 40 percent increase from a decade ago. Thus, it isn't surprising that efforts to measure and improve the quality of health care focuses a significant amount of attention on diabetes.Major health care quality datasets all include a number of measures related to the quality of diabetes care. Given the continuing growth in the burden of diabetes, it's appropriate to ask the question: What are we actually getting from measuring the quality of diabetes care as we do it today?Rozalina McCoy from Mayo Clinic joins A Health Podyssey today to discuss just that very topic.McCoy and coauthors published a paper in the July 2022 issue of Health Affairs examining diabetes quality measures in the US since the mid-1990s. They recommend some pretty significant changes in how we measure and report on the quality of diabetes care.McCoy's research was part of a six-paper cluster of research on type 2 diabetes, all of which were published in the July 2022 issue of Health Affairs.Order the July 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on type 2 diabetes and more.Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available - and we'd like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.Subscribe: RSS | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts