Greater investment in permanent supportive housing is critical to improving health outcomes, according to health and housing experts who spoke at a recent Senate briefing.
Harm reduction centers — where drug users and sex workers can get clean needles, syringes, free condoms and HIV prevention information — have existed for decades. They've generally operated on the outskirts of the health care system and pieced together shoestring budgets with the help of state and federal programs as well as private donations. Robert Cordero, outgoing president and chief program officer for New York City's BOOM!Health, says this opportunity is new — and very real. But harm reduction centers are increasingly trying to reposition themselves as a commodity for hospitals and insurers because of their unique experience in coordinating care for high-risk and often marginalized patients.
Two years ago, the American Medical Association said medical education needed a shakeup, citing "gaps between how medical students are trained and how healthcare is delivered," and put up $11 million to fund experiments in closing those gaps.
The Obama administration has decided that Medicare will pay for one of the newest, most expensive cancer medications, which costs about $178,000 for a standard course of treatment. Patients, doctors, hospital executives and insurers have expressed concern about the high cost of prescription drugs, especially new cancer medicines and treatments tailored to the genetic characteristics of individual patients. Medicare officials recognized the cost and value of one such product, the anticancer drug Blincyto, by agreeing to make additional payments for it starting Oct. 1. The drug is made by Amgen for patients with a particularly aggressive form of leukemia.
Bubbly and athletic, Heather Padgett, raised in a loving family in the Cincinnati suburbs, would not fit the stereotype of a heroin addict. But the 28-year-old former administrative assistant's addiction was so bad, she used heroin while pregnant. Her twin girls were born nine months ago while she was in treatment, and they suffered tremors from withdrawal. "I never thought I'd be pregnant and using drugs," Padgett said. Until she got clean last August, she was part of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called a heroin epidemic - a 100 percent rise in heroin addiction among Americans between 2002 and 2013.
At the end of May, I enjoyed reading a special report on MedPage Today focusing on "Less is More" for back pain. The author, Richard Deyo, MD, MPH, gave suggestions on reassuring patients when not ordering unnecessary tests and treatments for back pain.