Journal of general internal medicine
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Observational Study
Factors Associated with Compliance to the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule: a National Landscape Study.
The Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule, effective January 1, 2021, requires hospitals to post online a machine-readable file that includes payer-specific negotiated commercial prices for all services. The regulation aims to improve the affordability of hospital care by promoting price competition. However, a low compliance level among hospitals would compromise the operational effectiveness of this regulation. Understanding hospitals' compliance status to the regulation has important implications for its enforcement effort and effectiveness assessment. ⋯ Hospitals take into consideration the behavior of their peers in the same market when making price disclosure decisions. Compliant hospitals are likely to have better IT preparedness, more financial resources and personnel expertise to mitigate the cost required for the implementation of the Price Transparency Rule. The compliance cost, therefore, might be a barrier for some hospitals.
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Frontline health-care workers experienced moral injury long before COVID-19, but the pandemic highlighted how pervasive and damaging this psychological harm can be. Moral injury occurs when individuals violate or witness violations of deeply held values and beliefs. We argue that a continuum exists between moral distress, moral injury, and burnout. Distinguishing these experiences highlights opportunities for intervention and moral repair, and may thwart progression to burnout.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A Cluster-Randomized Clinical Trial to Decrease Prescription Opioid Misuse: Improving the Safety of Opioid Therapy (ISOT).
Interventions to reduce harms related to prescription opioids are needed in primary care settings. ⋯ ISOT did not impact risk for prescription opioid misuse but did lead to increased likelihood of prescription opioid discontinuation. More intensive interventions may be needed to impact treatment outcomes.
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Education and income, as two primary socioeconomic indicators, are often used interchangeably in health research. However, there is a lack of clear distinction between these two indicators concerning their associations with health. ⋯ Education and income were both independently associated with incident type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The combined associations of these two socioeconomic indicators revealed that within each education or income level, substantial health disparities existed across strata of the other socioeconomic indicator. Education and income are two equally important socioeconomic indicators in health, and should be considered simultaneously in health research and policymaking.
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Benzodiazepines and antipsychotics are routinely prescribed for symptom management in hospice. There is minimal evidence to guide prescribing in this population, and little is known about how prescribing varies across hospice agencies. ⋯ The pattern of benzodiazepine or antipsychotic prescribing of a hospice agency strongly predicts whether a hospice enrollee is prescribed these medications, exceeding every other patient-level factor. While the appropriate level of prescribing in hospice is unclear, this variation may reflect a strong local prescribing culture across individual hospice agencies.