Indicators from The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Perspectives and Experience of City Leaders from 118 Cities.

Rapid urbanization and escalating climate crises place cities at the critical juncture of environmental and public health action. Urban areas are home to more than half of the global population, contributing ~ 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Structured surveys were completed by 191 leaders in city governments and civil society from 118 cities in 52 countries (February-April 2024).

Combining Patient Survey Data With Diagnosis Codes Improved Medicare Advantage Risk-Adjustment Accuracy.

Under the current Medicare Advantage (MA) risk-adjustment system, plans are incentivized to report diagnosis codes on enrollees' medical claims reflecting additional and more severe health conditions to increase enrollees' risk scores and corresponding plan payments. To improve the integrity of risk adjustment, researchers have proposed four alternative methods to construct risk scores: calculate Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCC) scores excluding diagnosis codes from health risk assessments and chart reviews, calculate HCC scores excluding diagnosis codes most subject to score inflation, use pharmaceutical claims alone, and use self-reported survey responses alone or in combination with diagnosis codes. Using 2016-19 medical and pharmaceutical claims linked to Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey responses from 151,432 MA enrollees, we compared the predictive accuracy of each alternative strategy with the standard HCC approach.

The Role of Machine Learning in the Detection of Cardiac Fibrosis in Electrocardiograms: Scoping Review.

Background: Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Cardiac fibrosis impacts the underlying pathophysiology of many cardiovascular diseases by altering structural integrity and impairing electrical conduction. Identifying cardiac fibrosis is essential for the prognosis and management of cardiovascular disease; however, current diagnostic methods face challenges due to invasiveness, cost, and inaccessibility.

Excess Diagnosis Coding In Medicare Advantage: Evidence From Skilled Nursing Facility Clinical Assessments.

Some research suggests that risk adjustment plays a substantial role in explaining the high levels of government spending on Medicare Advantage (MA). We studied whether the reliance on diagnosis codes to risk-adjust payments to MA plans leads to the inflation of submitted diagnoses. Our approach relied on a comparison among diagnoses included in hospital claims, health status measures from similarly timed health assessments completed by skilled nursing facility (SNF) clinicians, and short-term mortality data.

Practitioner preferences in the analysis of cremation deposits in archaeology and biological anthropology: An overview of current osteoarchaeological practices with a focus on sex estimation.

Osteological data, such as biological sex, constitute a base for research in paleodemography and palaeopathology, as well as for understanding past socio-cultural practices. Despite extensive research efforts concerning cremated human remains over the past decades, an internationally acknowledged, standardized osteological protocol is not fully agreed upon. Furthermore, assessing cremation research practices from the literature is challenging because analysis reports are often written in the national languages of practitioners, which makes them difficult to access by an international audience.