Medicare’s bundled payment experiment for joint replacements shows moderate savings
Medicare’s randomized trial of a new bundled payment model for hip and knee replacement surgeries led to $812 in savings per procedure, or a 3.1% reduction in costs.
Frontlines - Winter 2019
Quick updates about the latest public health news from across the School and beyond.
Opioid, amphetamine use spikes in pregnant U.S. women
Opioid use quadrupled and amphetamine use doubled among pregnant U.S. women over the past decade, according to a new study. Researchers found that opioid use jumped from 1.5 per 1,000 deliveries in 2004 to 6.5 per 1,000 in…
Use of telehealth rising—slowly
Telehealth—the provision of health care via smart phone, tablet, or computer—is on the rise in the U.S., but is still relatively uncommon even though 32 states have enacted laws mandating insurance reimbursement for such services, according to a…
Chronic pain may be associated with higher suicide risk
Chronic pain may be a risk factor for suicide, according to a new study that found nearly one in 10 people who commit suicide had signs of chronic pain. The study examined data on 123,181 suicide deaths from…
Opioid prescribing rules may have unintended consequences
A set of new studies found that state and federal policies intended to keep doctors from overprescribing painkillers can sometimes have unintended consequences. One study showed that rules requiring doctors to check a database that would reveal patients…
‘Behavioral nudge’ influences doctors’ prescribing habits
A new study suggests that simply sending doctors letters informing them that they’re high prescribers of a medication with potentially dangerous side effects is enough to lead them to write fewer of those prescriptions. The study, from researchers…
Curbing opioid use disorder by treating it in the doctor’s office
If primary care physicians (PCPs) offered medication treatment for opioid use disorder more frequently, overdose deaths could be reduced, according to a Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) co-authored by Michael Barnett of Harvard…
Drugmakers cut spending on opioid marketing efforts
New data show that pharmaceutical companies are scaling back payments made to doctors to market opioid products. A June 28, 2018 report from ProPublica noted that drugmakers in 2016 made $15.8 million worth of payments to doctors to…
President Trump’s opioid declaration unlikely to address root causes of epidemic
On October 26, President Trump declared America’s opioid crisis a public health emergency. Michael Barnett discusses the enormity of the crisis and the potential impact of the President’s actions.
