Removing Barriers and Honoring Autonomy: Rethinking Mental Health Professional Assessments in Adolescent Gender-Affirming Medical Care.

Adolescents seeking gender-affirming medical care (GAMC) face numerous barriers that may delay or inhibit their access to these services. Such obstacles include mental health professional (MHP) assessment requirements prior to initiating GAMC. MHP letters ultimately carry little benefit for patients.

A Patient-Centered Documentation Skills Curriculum for Preclerkship Medical Students in an Open Notes Era.

Introduction: New legislation allows patients (with permitted exceptions) to read their clinical notes, leading to both benefits and ethical dilemmas. Medical students need a robust curriculum to learn documentation skills within this challenging context. We aimed to teach note-writing skills through a patient-centered lens with special consideration for the impact on patients and providers.

Secret shopper studies: an unorthodox design that measures inequities in healthcare access.

Secret shopper studies are particularly potent study designs that allow for the gathering of objective data for a variety of research hypotheses, including but not limited to, healthcare delivery, equity of healthcare, and potential barriers to care. Of particular interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, secret shopper study designs allow for the gathering of data over the phone. However, there is a dearth of literature available on appropriate methodological practices for these types of studies.

Charges for Initial Visits for Uninsured Patients at Musculoskeletal Urgent Care Centers in the US.

Importance: In recent years, specialized musculoskeletal urgent care centers (MUCCs) have opened across the US. Uninsured patients may increasingly turn to these orthopedic-specific urgent care centers as a lower-cost alternative to emergency department or general urgent care center visits.

Objective: To assess out-of-pocket costs and factors associated with these costs at MUCCs for uninsured and underinsured patients in the US.

The Impact of Social Media on College Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Multinational Review of the Existing Literature.

Purpose Of Review: During the COVID-19 pandemic, both social media use and rates of anxiety and depression among college students have increased significantly. This begs the question, what is the relationship between social media use and college student mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Recent Findings: Prior studies have found mixed results regarding the relationship between social media use and college student mental health. This relationship has become increasingly complex during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Musculoskeletal Urgent Care Centers Restrict Access for Patients with Medicaid Insurance Based on Policy and Location.

Background: As the urgent care landscape evolves, specialized musculoskeletal urgent care centers (MUCCs) are becoming more prevalent. MUCCs have been offered as a convenient, cost-effective option for timely acute orthopaedic care. However, a recent "secret-shopper" study on patient access to MUCCs in Connecticut demonstrated that patients with Medicaid had limited access to these orthopaedic-specific urgent care centers.

COVID-19 testing capabilities at urgent care centers in states with greatest disease burden.

While rapid and accessible diagnosis is paramount to monitoring and reducing the spread of disease, COVID-19 testing capabilities across the U.S. remain constrained.

Urgent Care Centers Delay Emergent Surgical Care Based on Patient Insurance Status in The United States.

Objective: Patients may call urgent care centers (UCCs) with urgent surgical conditions but may not be properly referred to a higher level of care. This study aims to characterize how UCCs manage Medicaid and privately insured patients who present with an emergent condition.

Methods: Using a standardized script, we called 1245 randomly selected UCCs in 50 states on 2 occasions.