Journal of general internal medicine
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To mitigate morbidity and mortality of the drug-related overdose crisis, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) can increase access to treatments that save lives-medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Despite an increasing need, MOUD continues to be underutilized due to multifaceted barriers that exist within broader macro- and microenvironments. ⋯ Increasing access to MOUD is not a singular fix to the overdose-related crisis. It is, however, a possible first step to mitigate harm, and save lives.
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Prior research has identified factors associated with prescription opioid initiation, but little is known about the prevalence or predictors of dose escalation among patients already prescribed long-term opioid therapy (LTOT). ⋯ In this 2-year prospective cohort study, variables associated with opioid dose escalation were lower opioid dose, higher pain catastrophizing, receiving opioids from a medical specialist (rather than primary care clinician) or nurse practitioner, and having recently undergone surgery. Study findings highlight intervention points that may be helpful for reducing the likelihood of future prescription opioid dose escalation.
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Clinician-educator (CE) careers in academic medicine are heterogeneous. Expectations for CEs have grown, along with a need to better prepare CEs for these roles. ⋯ While opinions were divided as to whether advanced training is necessary to position oneself for education roles, it is associated with greater academic productivity and reduced gender disparity in the publication domain. Institutions should consider providing opportunities for CEs to pursue advanced education training.
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Though patient-physician racial concordance correlates with better perceived shared decision-making, Chinese immigrants report low quality of care and have undertreated hypertension regardless of concordance. ⋯ Among these Chinese American seniors, there remains a gap between current and desired physician roles in hypertension management, particularly interpersonal behaviors and education. Seniors deprioritized these roles in response to perceived physician role strain. Increased attention to the impact of perceived physician role strain might improve shared decision-making and hypertension management.
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To address concerns that the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) unfairly penalized safety net hospitals treating patients with high social and functional risks, Medicare recently modified HRRP to compare hospitals with similar proportions of high-risk, dual-eligible patients ("peer group hospitals"). Whether the change fully accounts for patients' social and functional risks is unknown. ⋯ Patient-level risk adjustment decreased RSRRs for hospitals serving more at-risk patients and proportion of safety net hospitals penalized, while modestly increasing RSRRs and proportion of non-safety net hospitals penalized. Results suggest HRRP modifications may not fully account for hospital variation in patient-level risk.