Safety Net Primary Care Capabilities After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Importance: Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) provide care to 30 million patients in the US and have shown better outcomes and processes than other practice types. Little is known about how the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to FQHC capabilities compared with other practices.

Objective: To compare postpandemic operational characteristics and capabilities of FQHCs with non-FQHC safety net practices and non-FQHC, non-safety net practices.

Racial differences in low value care among older adult Medicare patients in US health systems: retrospective cohort study.

Objective: To characterize racial differences in receipt of low value care (services that provide little to no benefit yet have potential for harm) among older Medicare beneficiaries overall and within health systems in the United States.

Design: Retrospective cohort study SETTING: 100% Medicare fee-for-service administrative data (2016-18).

Participants: Black and White Medicare patients aged 65 or older as of 2016 and attributed to 595 health systems in the United States.

The role of comorbidities, medications, and social determinants of health in understanding urban-rural outcome differences among patients with heart failure.

Purpose: There is now a 20% disparity in all-cause, excess deaths between urban and rural areas, much of which is driven by disparities in cardiovascular death. We sought to explain the sources of these disparities for Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF).

Methods: Using a sample of Medicare Parts A, B, and D, we created a cohort of 389,528 fee-for-service beneficiaries with at least 1 heart failure hospitalization from 2008 to 2017.

How to integrate shared decision-making into your practice.

Despite the many benefits of shared decision-making, uptake of its practices is low. These tools and frameworks can help you to engage patients in their care decisions.

Virtual Access to Subspecialty Care.

Telehealth programs existed in many subspecialities before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the public health event motivated many subspecialties to reflect on how current technologies could be leveraged to benefit patient outcomes and increase health-care access. This article reviews the history and current state of telehealth access in many areas of subspecialty care. Primary care physicians (PCPs) may be unaware of the telehealth services and options local subspecialists offer.

Factors Influencing Telemedicine Use at a Northern New England Cancer Center During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Purpose: To characterize the use of telemedicine for oncology care over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern New England with a focus on factors affecting trends.

Methods: We performed a retrospective observational study using patient visit data from electronic health records from hematology-oncology and radiation-oncology service lines spanning the local onset of the pandemic from March 18, 2020, through March 31, 2021. This period was subdivided into four phases designated as lockdown, transition, stabilization, and second wave.