Outpatient dermatology appointment wait times for United States military veterans, 2014-2021.

Trends in outpatient dermatology appointment wait times for United States (US) veterans are poorly characterized. Given concerns surrounding prolonged wait times at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical facilities, the federal government introduced the Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Outside Networks (MISSION) Act in 2018, allowing veterans to receive VHA-reimbursed community care if VHA specialty care appointments cannot be scheduled within 28 days. Considering this expanded access to community care, we characterized among US veterans the (1) overall demand for dermatology appointments, (2) trends in average wait times, and (3) facility/geographic variation in wait times.

A critical view: Examining disparities regarding timely cholecystectomy.

Background: Implicit bias may prevent patients with abdominal pain from receiving optimal workup and treatment. We hypothesized that patients from socially disadvantaged backgrounds would be more likely to experience delays in receiving operative treatment for cholecystitis. To study this question, we examined factors related to having a prior emergency department presentation for abdominal pain (prior emergency department visit) within 3 months of urgent cholecystectomy.

Are orthopedic clinical trials representative? An analysis of race and ethnicity reported in clinical trials between 2007 and 2022 : Running title: representation of clinical trials in orthopedic surgery.

Introduction: Prior studies investigating the racial and ethnic representation of orthopedic trial participants have found low rates of reporting, but these studies are dated due to the passing of the National Institutes of Health Final Rule in 2017 requiring the reporting of racial and ethnic data among clinical trials. Therefore, we evaluated the representativeness of orthopedic clinical trials before and after the Final Rule.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey of orthopaedic clinical trials registered at ClinicalTrials.

Appointment wait times for surgical care in the Veterans Health Administration and Community Care Program.

Background: The Veterans Health Administration has been criticized for long wait times; however, studies indicate that Veterans Health Administration wait times are shorter than those for the Veterans Health Administration's Community Care Program. Previous studies have analyzed primary care wait times, but few have compared surgical specialties.

Methods: Using a publicly available data set of veteran appointments compiled from the Veterans Health Administration's Corporate Data Warehouse, a nationally representative database containing 623,868 surgical consults from January 1 to June 30, 2021, mean differences in wait times between the Veterans Health Administration and the Community Care Program were calculated across surgical specialties.

TRI-SCORE is superior to EuroSCORE II and STS-Score in mortality prediction following transcatheter edge-to-edge tricuspid valve repair.

Background: The development of transcatheter tricuspid edge-to-edge repair for tricuspid regurgitation is a therapeutic milestone but a specific periprocedural risk assessment tool is lacking. TRI-SCORE has recently been introduced as a dedicated risk score for tricuspid valve surgery.

Aims: This study analyzes the predictive performance of TRI-SCORE following transcatheter edge-to-edge tricuspid valve repair.