All-cause nursing home mortality rates have remained above pre-pandemic levels after accounting for decline in occupancy.

During the initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disproportionate share of COVID-19-related deaths occurred among nursing home residents. Initial estimates of all-cause mortality rates also spiked in early and late 2020 before falling to near or below historical rates by early 2021. During the first 3 years of the pandemic, the US nursing home resident population also decreased by 18% (239 000 fewer residents) compared with pre-pandemic levels.

COVID-19 employment shocks and safety net expansion: Health effects on displaced workers.

COVID-19 precipitated sharp job losses, concentrated in the service sector. Prior research suggests that such shocks would negatively affect health and wellbeing. However, the nature of the pandemic crisis was distinct in ways that may have mitigated any such negative effects, and historic expansions in unemployment insurance (UI) may have buffered workers from negative health consequences.

Variation in batch ordering of imaging tests in the emergency department and the impact on care delivery.

Objectives: To examine heterogeneity in physician batch ordering practices and measure the associations between a physician's tendency to batch order imaging tests on patient outcomes and resource utilization.

Study Setting And Design: In this retrospective study, we used comprehensive EMR data from patients who visited the Mayo Clinic of Arizona Emergency Department (ED) between October 6, 2018 and December 31, 2019. Primary outcomes are patient length of stay (LOS) in the ED, number of diagnostic imaging tests ordered during a patient encounter, and patients' return with admission to the ED within 72 h.

Moral Future-Thinking: Does the Moral Circle Stand the Test of Time?

Humanity's long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (N = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriented bias appears stronger for socially close compared with socially distant targets and for human targets relative to non-human animals and entities in nature.

Guidance for unbiased predictive information for healthcare decision-making and equity (GUIDE): considerations when race may be a prognostic factor.

Clinical prediction models (CPMs) are tools that compute the risk of an outcome given a set of patient characteristics and are routinely used to inform patients, guide treatment decision-making, and resource allocation. Although much hope has been placed on CPMs to mitigate human biases, CPMs may potentially contribute to racial disparities in decision-making and resource allocation. While some policymakers, professional organizations, and scholars have called for eliminating race as a variable from CPMs, others raise concerns that excluding race may exacerbate healthcare disparities and this controversy remains unresolved.

Making citizens, procedures, and outcomes: Theorizing politics in a co-productionist idiom.

The literature engaging political theory in STS often puts forward a deficit model view of STS, in which homegrown STS ideas about politics, such as co-production, are either treated as having an insufficient account of the political or not read as political theory at all. This article challenges the deficit discourse by reading co-production as a full-blown political theory in its own right, in particular by showing how it investigates normative questions of 'the good' that are central to any theorization of politics. Where political theory often concerns itself with the construction and application of universal political ideals-such as of the good citizen, legitimate procedures or smart outcomes-co-production looks at empirical sites where citizens, procedures, and outcomes articulate understandings of the good held by political actors in situ.

Digital phenotyping in bipolar disorder: Using longitudinal Fitbit data and personalized machine learning to predict mood symptomatology.

Background: Effective treatment of bipolar disorder (BD) requires prompt response to mood episodes. Preliminary studies suggest that predictions based on passive sensor data from personal digital devices can accurately detect mood episodes (e.g.

County-Level Enrollment in Medicare Advantage Plans Offering Expanded Supplemental Benefits.

Importance: Since 2019 and 2020, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have been able to offer supplemental benefits that address long-term services and supports (LTSS) and social determinants of health (SDOH).

Objective: To examine the temporal trends and geographic variation in enrollment in MA plans offering LTSS and SDOH benefits.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study used publicly available data to examine changes in beneficiary enrollment and plan offerings of LTSS and SDOH benefits from the benefits data from the second quarter of each year and other data from April of each year except 2024, for which the first quarter was the latest for benefits data and January the latest for other data at the time of analysis.

Physician-patient racial concordance and newborn mortality.

The racial gap in infant mortality is a pressing public-health concern, and [B. N. Greenwood et al.

Effects of Social Vulnerability and Environmental Burden on Care Fragmentation and Social Needs Among Individuals With Rheumatic Conditions.

Objective: Environmental hazards and heightened neighborhood social vulnerability coexist and disproportionately affect minoritized populations. We investigated associations between exposure to adverse environmental burden concentrated in areas with high social vulnerability and care fragmentation (missed appointments, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations) and social needs (eg, food and housing insecurity) among individuals with rheumatic conditions.

Methods: We identified adults receiving care in a Massachusetts multihospital system with at least two rheumatic disease codes and complete street addresses.

Benzodiazepine Initiation Effect on Mortality Among Medicare Beneficiaries Post Acute Ischemic Stroke.

Rationale: Despite guideline warnings, older acute ischemic stroke (AIS) survivors still receive benzodiazepines (BZD) for agitation, insomnia, and anxiety despite being linked to severe adverse effects, such as excessive somnolence and respiratory depression. Due to polypharmacy, drug metabolism, comorbidities, and complications during the sub-acute post-stroke period, older adults are more susceptible to these adverse effects. We examined the impact of receiving BZDs within 30 days post-discharge on survival among older Medicare beneficiaries after an AIS.

Labor market pathways to job quality mobility in the service sector: Evidence from the "Great Resignation".

Since the mid-1970s, there has been a sharp rise in the prevalence of "bad jobs" in the U.S. labor market, characterized by stagnant wages, unstable work schedules, and limited fringe benefits.