In the News

Wes Ely, MD, MPH was honored by the 

Many Medicare beneficiaries do not fill high-price specialty drug prescriptions, particularly those that do not receive a low-income subsidy. Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, and colleagues found that beneficiaries receiving subsidies were twice as likely to obtain the prescribed drug than those not receiving subsidies, demonstrating the need to increase the accessibility of high-price medications by reducing out-of-pocket expenses under Medicare Part D. 

Shari Barkin, MD, MSHS will depart VUMC to become chair of the Department of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University. Thank you, Dr. Barkin, for your many years of service and leadership at VUMC.

Allison McCoy, PhD and Adam Wright, PhD led a “Clickbusters” initiative to optimize best practice advisories (BPA) in eSTAR and help stem alert fatigue. A comprehensive review of 20% of the rule-based alerts in use at VUMC led to a 15% reduction in interruptive alerts. Sarah Horst, MD, MPH was a co-author on the study. Read More

Michael DeBaun, MD, MS, MPH has been elected president-elect of the American Pediatric Society (APS). The mission of the APS is to shape the future of academic pediatrics through the engagement of distinguished child health leaders to represent the full diversity within the field. Read More

Paul Harris, PhD, and colleagues with the All of Us Research Program announced that their cloud-based platform includes genetic data for over 165,000 participants, along with the survey, EHR, physical measurement and activity, and Census data. This repository is poised to be a major resource for biomedical research in this country.

Kevin Griffith, PhD examined how the pandemic impacted access to substance use disorder treatment services, which are improved with Medicaid services. Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states experienced similar increases in drug and opioid overdose deaths during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.