Affirmative Action Bans and Enrollment of Students From Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Groups in U.S. Public Medical Schools.

Background: The percentage of U.S. physicians who identify as being from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group remains low relative to their proportion in the U.

Association of Quetiapine Overuse Letters With Prescribing by Physician Peers of Targeted Recipients: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.

This secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial examines the association of antipsychotic overuse letters with changes in the prescription of quetiapine by physician peers.

A Health Plan's Formulary Led To Reduced Use Of Extended-Release Opioids But Did Not Lower Overall Opioid Use.

Many insurers are using formulary design to influence opioid prescribing, but it is unclear if these changes lead to reduced use or just substitution between opioids. We evaluated the effect of a new prior authorization process implemented in July 2015 for extended-release (ER) oxycodone by Blue Shield of California. Compared to other commercially insured Californians, among 880,000 Blue Shield enrollees, there was a 36 percent drop in monthly rates of ER opioid initiation relative to control-group members, driven entirely by decreases in ER oxycodone initiation and without any substitution toward other ER opioids.

Physicians' political preferences and the delivery of end of life care in the United States: retrospective observational study.

Objectives: To compare the delivery of end of life care given to US Medicare beneficiaries in hospital by internal medicine physicians with Republican versus Democrat political affiliations.

Design: Retrospective observational study.

Setting: US Medicare.

Association between rainfall and diagnoses of joint or back pain: retrospective claims analysis.

Objective: To study the relation between rainfall and outpatient visits for joint or back pain in a large patient population.

Design: Observational study.

Setting: US Medicare insurance claims data linked to rainfall data from US weather stations.

Association Between Treatment by Locum Tenens Internal Medicine Physicians and 30-Day Mortality Among Hospitalized Medicare Beneficiaries.

Importance: Use of locum tenens physicians has increased in the United States, but information about their quality and costs of care is lacking.

Objective: To evaluate quality and costs of care among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries treated by locum tenens vs non-locum tenens physicians.

Design, Setting, And Participants: A random sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries hospitalized during 2009-2014 was used to compare quality and costs of hospital care delivered by locum tenens and non-locum tenens internal medicine physicians.

Patient Mortality During Unannounced Accreditation Surveys at US Hospitals.

Importance: In the United States, hospitals receive accreditation through unannounced on-site inspections (ie, surveys) by The Joint Commission (TJC), which are high-pressure periods to demonstrate compliance with best practices. No research has addressed whether the potential changes in behavior and heightened vigilance during a TJC survey are associated with changes in patient outcomes.

Objective: To assess whether heightened vigilance during survey weeks is associated with improved patient outcomes compared with nonsurvey weeks, particularly in major teaching hospitals.

Opioid-Prescribing Patterns of Emergency Physicians and Risk of Long-Term Use.

Background: Increasing overuse of opioids in the United States may be driven in part by physician prescribing. However, the extent to which individual physicians vary in opioid prescribing and the implications of that variation for long-term opioid use and adverse outcomes in patients are unknown.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis involving Medicare beneficiaries who had an index emergency department visit in the period from 2008 through 2011 and had not received prescriptions for opioids within 6 months before that visit.

Sex Differences in Faculty Rank Among Academic Cardiologists in the United States.

Background: Studies demonstrate that women physicians are less likely than men to be full professors. Comprehensive evidence examining whether sex differences in faculty rank exist in academic cardiology, adjusting for experience and research productivity, is lacking. Therefore, we evaluated for sex differences in faculty rank among a comprehensive, contemporary cohort of US cardiologists after adjustment for several factors that impact academic advancement, including measures of clinical experience and research productivity.

Sex Differences in Physician Salary in US Public Medical Schools.

Importance: Limited evidence exists on salary differences between male and female academic physicians, largely owing to difficulty obtaining data on salary and factors influencing salary. Existing studies have been limited by reliance on survey-based approaches to measuring sex differences in earnings, lack of contemporary data, small sample sizes, or limited geographic representation.

Objective: To analyze sex differences in earnings among US academic physicians.

Do heads of government age more quickly? Observational study comparing mortality between elected leaders and runners-up in national elections of 17 countries.

Objectives: To determine whether being elected to head of government is associated with accelerated mortality by studying survival differences between people elected to office and unelected runner-up candidates who never served.

Design: Observational study.

Setting: Historical survival data on elected and runner-up candidates in parliamentary or presidential elections in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States, from 1722 to 2015.

Sex Differences in Academic Rank in US Medical Schools in 2014.

Importance: The proportion of women at the rank of full professor in US medical schools has not increased since 1980 and remains below that of men. Whether differences in age, experience, specialty, and research productivity between sexes explain persistent disparities in faculty rank has not been studied.

Objective: To analyze sex differences in faculty rank among US academic physicians.