Characteristics of short-term acute care hospitals that experienced a ransomware attack from 2016 to 2021.

As cybercrime increasingly targets the health care sector, hospitals face the growing threat of ransomware attacks. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that prevents users from accessing their electronic systems-demanding payment to restore access. In response, momentum is gathering to enact policy that will help hospitals strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.

Association between physician practice Medicaid acceptance and employing nurse practitioners and physician assistants: A longitudinal analysis.

Background: Access to care is often a challenge for Medicaid beneficiaries due to low practice participation. As demand increases, practices will likely look for ways to see Medicaid patients while keeping costs low. Employing nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) is one low-cost and effective means to achieve this.

COVID-19 Has Increased Medicaid Enrollment, But Short-Term Enrollment Changes Are Unrelated To Job Losses.

The recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has resulted in unprecedented job losses in the United States, disrupting health insurance coverage for millions of people. Several models have predicted large increases in Medicaid enrollment among those who have lost jobs, yet the number of Americans who have gained coverage since the pandemic began is unknown. We compiled Medicaid enrollment reports covering the period from March 1 through June 1, 2020, for twenty-six states.

Relationship between initiation of 340B participation and hospital safety-net engagement.

Objective: The 340B program allows safety-net hospitals to acquire discounted outpatient drugs and charge payers full price. We examined whether 340B participation increases safety-net engagement.

Data Sources: 340B participation data, Medicare hospital cost reports, American Hospital Association Survey, and Schedule 990 nonprofit hospital tax returns.

Does Vertical Integration Improve Access to Surgical Care for Medicaid Beneficiaries?

Background: Vertical integration is increasingly common among surgical specialties in the US; however, the effect of vertical integration on access to care for low-income populations remains poorly understood. We explored the characteristics of surgical practices associated with vertical integration and the effect of integration on surgical access for Medicaid populations.

Study Design: Using a survey of US office-based physician practices, we examined characteristics of 15 surgical subspecialties from 2007 to 2017, including provider sex and specialty, practice payer mix, surgical volume, and county socioeconomic status.

Revenues and Profits From Medicare Patients in Hospitals Participating in the 340B Drug Discount Program, 2013-2016.

Importance: The federal 340B program lowers the acquisition cost of prescription drugs and places no limits on what hospitals charge payers. Congress established the program to allow 340B profits (the difference between payments and acquisition costs) to subsidize other safety-net services. Little is known about the magnitude of revenues and profits from the 340B program among participating hospitals.

Hospital-Physician Consolidation Accelerated In The Past Decade In Cardiology, Oncology.

Consolidation of physician practices by hospitals, or vertical integration, increased across all practice types in 2007-17. Rates of growth were highest among medical and surgical specialty practices and lowest among primary care practices. There was substantial variation within the specialties, ranging from 4 percentage points in dermatology to 34 percentage points in cardiology and oncology.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion and gains in health insurance coverage and access among cancer survivors.

Background: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act extends Medicaid coverage to millions of low-income adults, including many survivors of cancer who were unable to purchase affordable health insurance coverage in the individual health insurance market.

Methods: Using data from the 2011 to 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the authors compared changes in coverage and health care access measures for low-income cancer survivors in states that did and did not expand Medicaid.

Results: The study population of 17,381 individuals included adults aged 18 to 64 years, and was predominantly female, white, and unmarried.

Evaluating Community-Based Health Improvement Programs.

Increasingly, public and private resources are being dedicated to community-based health improvement programs. But evaluations of these programs typically rely on data about process and a pre-post study design without a comparison community. To better determine the association between the implementation of community-based health improvement programs and county-level health outcomes, we used publicly available data for the period 2002-06 to create a propensity-weighted set of controls for conducting multiple regression analyses.

The Changing Dynamics Of US Health Insurance And Implications For The Future Of The Affordable Care Act.

The introduction of Medicaid expansions and state Marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have reduced the uninsurance rate to historic lows, changing the choices Americans make about coverage. In this article we shed light on these changing dynamics. We drew upon multistate transition models fit to nationally representative longitudinal data to estimate coverage transition probabilities between major insurance types in the years leading up to and including 2014.

The Growing Integration of Physician Practices: With a Medicaid Side Effect.

Background: Strategic alignment and integration is currently in vogue throughout the health care industry, but its diffusion and pace have not been documented in recent years. The full range of downstream implications from greater alignment between hospitals and physicians has also not been completely explored.

Objectives: We track the organizational landscape among all office-based US physician practices from 2009 to 2015 and document the degree of vertical integration over time.

Federal Support for Family Planning Clinics Associated with Dramatic Gains in Cervical Cancer Screening.

Background: Since the 1990s, policymakers have successfully increased cervical cancer screening through federal and state public policies. However, the most dramatic gains in Pap smear use occurred in the 1960's and 70's, during the establishment of federal support for family planning clinics through the War on Poverty and Title X. This study estimated the effect of this support on cervical cancer screening, and quantified its role in dramatic increases in Pap smear use.