How do hospitals exert market power? Evidence from health systems and commercial health plan prices.

Consolidation of independent hospitals and physician practices into integrated health systems has reshaped the delivery of health care. While the literature suggests that provider consolidation raises prices, few studies have examined the interplay of health systems and insurers in relation to prices. Using negotiated price data that commercial insurers recently released under the Transparency in Coverage Final Rule, we examined the association between hospital concentration under health systems and prices for outpatient procedures in local health care markets with different levels of insurer concentration.

Challenges of Treating a C2 Odontoid Fracture in an Elderly Patient With Multiple Comorbidities: A Case Report.

An 88-year-old male with a history of cervical spondylosis (status post laminectomy of C2-C3 and laminoplasty of C4-C5), chronic congestive heart failure (CHF), pulmonary embolism, and lumbar spinal stenosis presented to an outpatient sports medicine clinic with neck pain following a fall five days prior due to loss of balance. He reported pain on the left side worsened by movement and accompanied by neck "clicking." A physical exam showed severe limitation in cervical spine extension limited by pain and loss of lordotic curve and a neurologic exam demonstrated weakness in the left leg secondary to a previous back surgery.

Attention-dependent attribute comparisons underlie multi-attribute decision-making in orbitofrontal cortex.

Economic decisions often require weighing multiple dimensions, or attributes. The orbitofrontal cortex FC) is thought to be important for computing the integrated value of an option from its attributes and comparing lues to make a choice. Although OFC neurons are known to encode integrated values, evidence for value mparison has been limited.

Neural populations in macaque anterior cingulate cortex encode social image identities.

The anterior cingulate cortex gyrus (ACCg) has been implicated in prosocial behaviors and reasoning about social cues. While this indicates that ACCg is involved in social behavior, it remains unclear whether ACCg neurons also encode social information during goal-directed actions without social consequences. To address this, we assessed how social information is processed by ACCg neurons in a reward localization task.