-After six years of an intensely polarized legislative and implementation process, the United States has achieved significant national health reform. Though much implementation work remains, the essential reform structure stands and is increasingly immune from repeal by its opponents. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the first law ever in US history to attempt comprehensive health reform by simultaneously addressing access, quality, and cost control. Regarding access, the ACA is on target to cover about half the US uninsured population by 2017, or 92% of all citizens and authorized immigrants, though offering no meaningful lessons to all other advanced nations that have already created universal health insurance systems. Regarding quality improvement and cost control, the ACA's numerous initiatives will offer increasingly valuable evidence and insights to other advanced nations struggling to develop greater efficiency, quality, and effectiveness in their medical care systems. The US is moving quickly and unevenly to transform its health care financing model away from fee-for-service and toward a capitated-accountable-global payment structure that rewards quality and efficiency over volume. As the political storm over "Obamacare" subsides, policy makers will increasingly focus on making continuous policy improvements to this historic law.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/23288604.2014.969121 | DOI Listing |
ACS Infect Dis
December 2024
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, United States.
Carbapenemase producing (CPEs) represent a group of multidrug resistant pathogens for which few, if any, therapeutics options remain available. CPEs generally harbor plasmids that encode resistance to last resort carbapenems and many other antibiotics. We previously performed a high throughput screen to identify compounds that can disrupt the maintenance and replication of resistance conferring plasmids through use of a synthetic screening plasmid introduced into K-12 cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergy Asthma Proc
January 2025
Department of Pharmacovigilance, Pharmacovigilance and Quality Assurance Group, Torii Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
Standardized quality (SQ) house-dust mite (HDM) sublingual immunotherapy tablets (10,000 Japanese allergy units [JAU], equivalent to 6 SQ-HDM in Europe and the United States) are licensed for the treatment of HDM-induced allergic rhinitis (AR) without age restriction, based on 52-week administration clinical trials. There are no large-scale data on the administration of 10,000 JAU for > 1 year in actual clinical practice. To examine the safety and effectiveness of 10,000 JAU during use for up to 3 years at real-world clinical sites in Japan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergy Asthma Proc
January 2025
The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Chapter 797 provides critical standards for compounding sterile preparations to ensure patient safety and medication efficacy. The latest revision, effective November 1, 2023, introduces updates particularly relevant to the compounding of allergenic extracts, which emphasizes stringent compliance measures. This article aims to review the key updates to USP Chapter 797, outline the compliance requirements for personnel and facilities, and offer strategies for staying current with these practice guidelines, leveraging resources from professional organizations such as American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergy Asthma Proc
January 2025
Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
To evaluate the association of parenteral epinephrine and terbutaline use on ventilatory support in children admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with critical asthma in the United States. Data were obtained from the Pediatric Health Information System data base for children ages 2 to 18 years admitted to the ICU with a diagnosis of asthma exacerbation from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2023. The primary outcomes included noninvasive ventilation (NIV) and/or invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) use after receipt of terbutaline and/or epinephrine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImplement Sci Commun
December 2024
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 330 Brookline Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Background: Doulas, non-clinical professionals who provide support throughout the perinatal period, can positively impact patient experiences and clinical outcomes during birth. Doulas often support hospital-based births without being employed by the hospital system, resulting in varied relationships with hospitals and clinicians. Systems-level changes are needed to maximize collaboration between hospitals and doulas to ensure facilitation of, and not barriers to, doula support.
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