Journal of general internal medicine
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Clustering of chronic conditions is associated with high healthcare costs. Sustaining blood pressure (BP) control could be a strategy to prevent high-cost multimorbidity clusters. ⋯ Among Medicare beneficiaries in ALLHAT, sustained SBP was associated with a lower risk of developing high-cost multimorbidity dyads and triads.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Dissociation Between Long-term Weight Loss Intervention and Blood Pressure: an 18-month Randomized Controlled Trial.
Obesity is associated with elevated blood pressure (BP). In patients with obesity and hypertension, weight loss lowers BP, but the long-term effect of weight loss on BP is less clear. ⋯ ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01530724.
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Stable, affordable housing is an established determinant of health. As affordable housing shortages across the USA threaten to displace people from their homes, it is important to understand the implications of cost-related residential moves for healthcare access. ⋯ People who have moved due to unaffordable housing represent a population at increased risk for unmet medical needs. Policy makers seeking to improve population health should consider strategies to limit cost-related moves and to mitigate their adverse effects on healthcare access.
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Information on the prevalence of common imaging findings among patients without back pain in spine imaging reports might affect pain medication prescribing for patients with back pain. Prior research on inserting this text suggested a small reduction in opioid prescribing. ⋯ Inserting epidemiologic text in spine imaging reports had no effect on whether new non-opioid pain-related medications were prescribed but was associated with the number of new prescriptions for certain non-opioid sub-classes.