In the News

Medicare beneficiaries without low-income subsidies were less likely to fill important prescriptions, new study finds

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. 

VUMC Clickbusters program helps reduce EHR alerts

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

U.S. precision medicine research program releases genomic data

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.

Study shows little variance in overdose deaths when sorting by Medicaid expansion status

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.