Health Policy

Researchers who analyzed payroll-based staffing data for U.S. nursing homes discovered large daily staffing fluctuations, low weekend staffing and daily staffing levels that often fall well below the expectations of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), all of which can increase the risk of adverse events for residents.

Medicare Part D enrollees may pay more out of pocket for high-priced specialty generic drugs than their brand-name counterparts, according to new research by health policy experts at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

While there has been much effort to control spending for individuals eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare in the United States, for the first time a team of Vanderbilt health policy researchers have analyzed spending trends for this population over a multiyear period in order to gain a much clearer understanding of exactly how much is being spent and by whom.

As both drug prices and out-of-pocket expense for prescription medications continue to climb, a team of Health Policy experts at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) have received a grant to determine if these factors are causing older Americans enrolled in Medicare Part D for medication coverage to delay or never fill their prescriptions.

Generic drug options did not reduce prices paid for the cancer therapy imatinib (Gleevec), according to a Health Affairs study released this week.

A new study from researchers at Vanderbilt and Harvard universities, published this week in the journal Health Affairs, uses federal health survey data to evaluate community-based efforts to address smoking, obesity and other health conditions such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

A combination of two antibiotics is often prescribed to treat community-acquired pneumonia in children, but a JAMA Pediatrics study is now showing that using just one of the two has the same benefit to patients in most cases.