Department of Health Policy

Male infants are more likely at birth than their female counterparts to be diagnosed with drug withdrawal symptoms, also known as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), and to require treatment, according to a new Vanderbilt study published in Hospital Pediatrics.

Vindell Washington, M.D., MHCM, former national coordinator for health information technology with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spoke at Vanderbilt University Medical Center last week.

Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act provides patients with a greater choice of hospital facilities, Vanderbilt researchers have found.

With lawmakers in the nation’s capital having reached a political impasse over replacement of the Affordable Care Act, it’s unclear just where health care policy may be going. The challenges of dealing with this uncertainty were the subject of Monday’s panel discussion at Vanderbilt featuring state and hospital industry officials.

Social risk factors including income, education and ethnic background influence health outcomes and should be taken into account in Medicare payment models, according to a New England Journal of Medicine “Perspective” titled “Social Risk Factors and Equity in Medicare Payment.”

The researchers examine whether the financial struggles of some major insurers under the Affordable Care Act reflect a policy failure or a mismatch of these firms’ capabilities and strategies to a newly created market.

Proposed Medicaid reforms are similar to the capped federal financing system in place during the '50s and early '60s, when states generally reimbursed a much smaller proportion of health care for the needy.