Articles related to Geriatrics

The new proposed rules are being cheered by caregivers and are in response to complaints from patients and providers that the PA process is often burdensome, disruptive to care, delaying care, costly, and a major source of frustration and burnout for providers.

Many prior studies associated enrollment in Medicare Advantage with lower use of health care services, greater performance of recommended preventive services, and higher scores for some measures of patient experience. This and other studies over the last decade suggest that “the association between Medicare Advantage and higher quality of care is modest at best.”

These specialties had the highest proportion of doctors still making student loan payments, per the 2022 Medscape report: Emergency Medicine (31%) Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (31%) Pediatrics (31%) Neurology (28%) Otolaryngology (28%) Family Medicine (28%) For the least debt-burdened: Pulmonary Medicine (10%) Public Health & Preventive Medicine (11%) Rheumatology (12%) Diabetes & Endocrinology (15%) Dermatology (16%) Cardiology (16%)

In a randomized study involving 750 ICU patient on mechanical ventilation, minimizing sedation and employing daily physiotherapy did not yield better outcomes vs. standard care – but did increase the number of adverse events.

This study of 2,500 adults receiving mechanical ventilation randomized 1/3 were assigned to an exigent saturation target pf 90%, 1/3 to a target of 94%, and 1/3 to a target of 98%. The median number of ventilator-free days was 20, 21, and 21 for the three target groups, respectively. In-hospital death by day 28 was 34.8%, 34.0%, and 33.2% for the three groups, respectively.

In a cohort study of more than 2 million patients, influenza vaccination was associated with a 22% to 24% lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. But more than half of that effect seems to be that healthier people are more likely to be vaccinated for flu.