Rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), which occurs in newborns who were exposed to opioids in the womb, have increased dramatically over the past decade. This web-based tool displays the rates of NAS from 2009 to 2015 by county in eight states: Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.
Newborns exposed to opioids before birth can experience withdrawal symptoms known as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). From 2009 to 2015, the average NAS rate per 1,000 hospital births across eight states rose from about six to more than 25.
The 2010 reformulation of Oxycontin to prevent abuse of the drug (by making it crush-proof and therefore impossible to dissolve in liquid) had the unintended effect of driving some users to switch to heroin, which contributed to a dramatic rise in Hepatitis C.
Fewer than 10% of West Virginia Medicaid enrollees received medication for opioid use disorder after a non-fatal overdose, making it an opportunity to increase treatment for opioid use disorder and co-occurring mental health conditions.
Adding e-discontinuation functionality has the potential to help reduce medication errors and take fuller advantage of e-prescribing technology. Prescribers need to be able to e-discontinue prescriptions, just as easily as they can e-prescribe them.
Despite telehealth's potential to improve access to care, it is underutilized by safety-net providers, including Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), due to a range of policy, organizational, and logistical barriers. This research facilitates state-to-state learning to inform both Medicaid policy and Medicare policy going forward and provide lessons learned for FQHCs interested in starting or expanding telehealth programs.
Consideration of how the CPIC approach of comparing coalition and individual technical assistance interventions to implement behavioral health treatments across sectors might be adapted to address the opioid epidemic.
This study suggests that either treatment may not be delivered equitably or that patient preference may be an important factor in determining who gets what treatment.
This research sheds light on how collaborative care (CC) may work to increase abstinence in a sample of primary care patients with opioid and alcohol use disorders (OAUD).
The objectives of this study were to describe quality of care for unhealthy alcohol use among patients visiting primary care settings and to determine whether better quality of alcohol care was linked to reduced alcohol consumption 6 months later.
The proposed study addresses 2 important public health problems: (1) Individuals convicted of a DUI are mandated to attend a DUI program, but many recidivate and, (2) There is a disproportionate lack of access to AUD treatment for Latino populations.
In this RCT, adding a didactic lecture to a simulation curriculum did not lead to improvement in CRM skills, and there was actually a non-significant trend towards improved CRM skills in the control arm compared with the intervention arm.
Our results suggest that the omission of MAT in the current version of the HEDIS measure "Initiation and Engagement of Alcohol and Other Drug Dependence Treatment" results in meaningful measurement error.
Technology-enabled collaborative learning and capacity-building models connect generalist providers, often located in remote areas, with specialist teams that help train these providers so that they can deliver care for conditions that generalists might not otherwise feel adequately prepared to handle. This report focuses on the quality of evidence for the effectiveness of such models and describes ways to improve measurement of effectiveness.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently launched its Quality Payment Program (QPP), which changes how physicians are paid under Medicare. Significant concerns have been raised about the ability of small rural medical practices to successfully participate in the QPP. RAND researchers interviewed physicians on the initial implementation of the QPP to understand flexibility provisions and to inform future federal rulemaking.
New opioid prescriptions decreased among higher-risk patients who used benzodiazepines from 2010 to 2015, suggesting that the rapid increase in opioid-related deaths is primarily associated with factors other than physicians writing new opioid prescriptions.
This translated report identifies and assesses potential models of organization to help achieve the goals of Zhejiang University's academic medical center (AMC). The university, Yuhang District Government, and donors have invested resources in the development of a new AMC to integrate the university's health-related research, teaching, and care activities; and to build a world-class comprehensive biomedical and clinical research infrastructure.
This study determined the minimum sample sizes needed for reliability with two key health-related quality-of-life outcome-based performance measures among older adults. These estimates can guide the design of future patient-reported outcome-based performance measures.
American Indian/Alaska Native adolescents in this study used alcohol or other drugs at rates similar to those found in national surveys and rates of risky sexual behavior were also comparable to national data.
A one-day AHRQ conference led to a consensus-driven research agenda aiming to better understand and respond to the short- and long-term emotional impact of harmful events on patients and families.
