Department Of Health Policy

Social risk factors including income, education and ethnic background influence health outcomes and should be taken into account in Medicare payment models, according to a New England Journal of Medicine “Perspective” titled “Social Risk Factors and Equity in Medicare Payment.” Read More

The researchers examine whether the financial struggles of some major insurers under the Affordable Care Act reflect a policy failure or a mismatch of these firms’ capabilities and strategies to a newly created market. Read More

Proposed Medicaid reforms are similar to the capped federal financing system in place during the '50s and early '60s, when states generally reimbursed a much smaller proportion of health care for the needy. Read More

“Epigenetic signatures” in DNA may present an opportunity for prevention of or early intervention in childhood obesity. Read More

Russell Rothman, M.D., professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy, Vice President for Population Health Research, and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research, has been named president-elect of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH). He will serve as president beginning in January 2018. Read More

A trans-institutional team of Vanderbilt social scientists and medical professionals will look at how laws affecting LGBT individuals and families affect their health and the economy. Read More

A Vanderbilt University study published today in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry may help patients prescribed higher doses of certain antidepressants feel better about attributed cardiac risks. Read More

Traditional healers in sub-Saharan have a high rate of exposure to blood, putting them at risk for HIV and hepatitis C. Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is part of a 6-year, $4.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to improve the use of prescribed medication by sickle cell patients. Read More

In the journal Medical Care, Michael Richards, M.D., Ph.D., MPH and colleagues report that more office-based physicians are affiliating with integrated health systems. Apparently through this affiliation, physicians become more likely to accept Medicaid patients. From 2009 to 2015, independent practices decreased from 73 percent to 60 percent… Read More

Health care once seemed simple: You got sick, called a doctor, and paid the bill as best you could. Today health care accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. gross domestic product—about $3 trillion of economic activity annually. It’s also the largest item in the federal budget, making… Read More

In one of the largest, most representative health surveys conducted to date, lesbian, gay and bisexual adults reported substantially higher rates of severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and smoking, and impaired physical health than did heterosexuals. Read More

The implementation of state prescription drug monitoring programs was associated with the prevention of approximately one opioid-related overdose death every two hours on average nationwide, according to a new Vanderbilt-led study released this week in the journal "Health Affairs." Read More

Long-acting opioids are associated with a significantly increased risk of death when compared with alternative medications for moderate-to-severe chronic pain, according to a Vanderbilt study released today in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation (JAMA). Read More

Mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, is still a major problem in resource-limited, rural areas of the world where health care providers are scarce. Read More

With discoveries ranging from the origins of consciousness to the end of the universe, 2015 was a year of incredibly diverse research at Vanderbilt University. Read More

Use of opioid analgesics is associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for serious infections among patients with rheumatoid arthritis, according to a Vanderbilt study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology. Read More

Clinics with more non-physician clinicians are associated with better access for Medicaid patients and lower prices for office visits, according to a recent study. Read More

Michael Porter, Ph.D., MBA, of Harvard Business School, a leading authority on organizational strategy, spoke recently at the Owen Graduate School of Management during the opening session of the First Annual Value-based Health Care Delivery Seminar. Read More

A “bundle” of electronically implemented care guidelines reduced intensive care unit patient complications related to mechanical ventilation. Read More