Effect of Retail Clinic Use on Continuity of Care Among Medicare Beneficiaries.

Purpose: We examined the relationship between retail clinic use and primary care physician (PCP) continuity among Medicare enrollees in the Houston metropolitan area.

Methods: We identified retail clinic providers in the study area using a 2015 health care provider database. Medicare claims data from enrollees who received care from retail clinics in 2015 were compared with propensity score-matched sample of enrollees who received no care from retail clinics.

Association between cannabis laws and opioid prescriptions among privately insured adults in the US.

We examine the association between opioid prescription patterns in privately insured adults and changes in state cannabis laws among five age groups (18-25, 26-35 36-45, 46-55 and 56-64 years). Using the 2016 Clinformatics Data Mart, a nationwide commercial health insurance database, we performed a cross-sectional analysis of two types of opioid prescribing (>30-day and >90-day prescriptions) among all adults aged 18-64 based on the stringency of cannabis laws. We found a significant interaction between age and cannabis law on opioid prescriptions.