Pharmacy and neighborhood-level variation in cash price of diabetes medications in the United States.

Background: Diabetes medications place significant financial burden on patients but less is known about factors affecting cost variation.

Objective: To examine pharmacy and neighborhood factors associated with cost variation for diabetes drugs in the US.

Research Design, Subjects And Measures: We used all-payer US pharmacy data from 45,874 chain and independent pharmacies reflecting 7,073,909 deidentified claims.

A Cost Analysis of Phosphodiesterase Type 5 Inhibitors in the United States.

Objective: To perform a cost analysis of generic and brand-name Phosphodiesterase Type 5 (PDE5) inhibitors at different dosages and pharmacies across the US.

Methods: Using an all-payer retail pharmacy-claims database, we analyzed prescription drug data for three generic and six brand-name oral PDE5 inhibitors at different dosages across US chain and independent pharmacies in 2019.

Results: We obtained cash price data from 60,186 pharmacies (35,976 chain and 24,210 independent).

Capillary Transfer of Self-Assembled Colloidal Crystals.

Colloidal self-assembly has attracted significant interest in numerous applications including optics, electrochemistry, thermofluidics, and biomolecule templating. To meet the requirements of these applications, numerous fabrication methods have been developed. However, these are limited to narrow ranges of feature sizes, are incompatible with many substrates, and/or have low scalability, significantly limiting the use of colloidal self-assembly.

Characteristics of Cancer Hospitals with Written Language Access Policies.

Patients with limited English proficiency receive worse care due to communication barriers. Little is known about which cancer hospitals have written language access policies addressing bilingual clinicians. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of healthcare organizations, matching survey data to American Hospital Association Survey and American Community Survey data.

The Impact of Job and Insurance Loss on Prescription Drug use: A Panel Data Approach to Quantifying the Health Consequences of Unemployment During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Due to the nature of health insurance in the United States, health care utilization is often tied to economic conditions, at both the individual and aggregate levels. This article examines how loss of employment may reduce medication adherence through the subsequent loss of insurance and income. At the individual level, the loss of employer-sponsored insurance is shown to be associated with lower prescription drug use and higher out-of-pocket expenditures.

Rapid detection of multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern by PAM-targeting mutations.

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) that increase transmission or disease severity or reduce diagnostic or vaccine efficacy continue to emerge across the world. Current methods available to rapidly detect these can be resource intensive and thus sub-optimal for large-scale deployment needed during a pandemic response. Here, we describe a CRISPR-based assay that detects mutations in spike gene CRISPR PAM motif or seed regions to identify a pan-specific VOC single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)) ((D614G) and Alpha- and Delta-specific (S982A and D950N) SNPs.

Prescription Filling Patterns of Evidence-Based Medical Therapies for Heart Failure During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.

Background: Maintaining a steady medication supply during a public health crisis is a major health priority. We leveraged a large U.S.

Assessment of variation in 30-day mortality following cancer surgeries among older adults across US hospitals.

Background: While public reporting of surgical outcomes for noncancer conditions is common, cancer surgeries have generally been excluded. This is true despite numerous studies showing outcomes to differ between hospitals based on their characteristics. Our objective was to assess whether three prerequisites for quality assessment and reporting are present for 30-day mortality after cancer surgery: low burden for timely reporting, hospital variation, and potential for public health gains.

Inpatient folate testing at an academic cancer center: single-year experience.

Purpose: The value of testing for folate deficiency has been scrutinized recently given low prevalence of deficiency with widespread dietary fortification. Numerous studies have shown folate testing to be low yield overall. However, the value of such testing in the inpatient cancer population has not been defined.

Facts and Fears in Public Reporting: Patients' Information Needs and Priorities When Selecting a Hospital for Cancer Care.

Public reporting on the quality of provider care has the potential to empower patients to make evidence-based decisions. Yet patients seldom consult resources such as provider report cards in part because they perceive the information as irrelevant. To inform more effective public reporting, we investigated patients' information priorities when selecting a hospital for cancer treatment.

Assessing whether cancer stage is needed to evaluate measures of hospital surgical performance.

Rational, Aims, And Objectives: While public reports of hospital-level surgical quality measures are becoming increasingly common in health care, a comprehensive national assessment of surgical quality across multiple cancer sites has yet to be developed. Fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare claims present a potential resource from which to measure outcomes following cancer surgery given the national scope of patients and providers. However, due to the administrative nature of the data, clinical cancer information such as stage is not recorded.

Identifying Cancer-Directed Surgeries in Medicare Claims: A Validation Study Using SEER-Medicare Data.

Purpose: Medicare claims provide a rich data source for large-scale quality assessment because data are available for all beneficiaries nationally. For cancer surgery, the absence of information regarding site of cancer and date of diagnosis on an administrative claim necessitates testing to ensure accurate quality assessment and public reporting.

Methods: Using the SEER Medicare-linked database as the gold standard, we developed and tested an approach to identify cancer-directed surgeries from Medicare fee-for-service claims alone.

Nonanastomotic strictures after colonic interposition.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the clinical and radiographic findings in a series of patients with nonanastomotic strictures after colonic interposition.

Conclusion: Nonanastomotic strictures usually appear on upper gastrointestinal tract radiography as relatively long segments of smooth, tapered narrowing involving the interposed colon, most likely resulting from chronic ischemia. Unlike strictures at the esophagocolic or cologastric anastomosis, these long nonanastomotic strictures generally have a poor response to endoscopic dilatation procedures and are more likely to necessitate surgical revision of the colonic interposition.

Real-time quantitative PCR measurement of thyroglobulin mRNA in peripheral blood of thyroid cancer patients and healthy subjects.

Follow-up of recurrent differentiated thyroid carcinoma involves the measurement of serum thyroglobulin (Tg). However, Tg autoantibodies are present in a high proportion of thyroid carcinoma patients (up to 25%) and these can interfere with the Tg immunoassays. To overcome this obstacle, investigators have used real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to measure Tg mRNA in the blood of patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, with varying degrees of success.