Medicare Advantage plans are endangering the lives of older adults and people with disabilities. The HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which works to fight waste, fraud, and abuse, recently issued a devastating report showing that these corporate health plans, which contract with the government to deliver Medicare benefits, are denying large amounts of care inappropriately.
Category Archive: Research Findings
We just finished talking to over 200 hundred HCPs about pharma marketing and salespeople to measure any differences since before the pandemic. Attitudes are indeed changing, but one need remains clear: access to data obtained during clinical and ongoing trials.
(Washington Post) Obesity turned out to be a major risk factor for covid hospitalization and death, especially non-elderly. According to the CDC, it is linked to impaired immune function and decreased lung capacity; it can make ventilation more difficult. Once again, obesity indicates that it’s killing us.
SUMMARY:
- Online health seeker numbers are still very high, indicating that people are doing their research first before asking for a prescription drug.
- Online health seekers trust pharma products but find product websites hard to read and inconsistent with their needs.
- Telehealth numbers are dropping rapidly, but people still want to use telehealth to ask for Rx renewals and ask general questions.
- By far, people over 50 are the biggest segment of online health seekers.
WHAT’S UP?: It’s time to admit that the FDA is completely out of touch regarding DTC advertising. Fair balance is not being read in ads or listened to on TV, and the language used in fair balance is too often complicated for online health seekers.
QUICK READ: How has the pandemic affected DTC TV ads and what are people doing to learn more about new prescription drugs? These were the questions we posed in an online and phone survey. Here is what we learned…
- Women in the United States have long lagged behind their counterparts in other high-income countries in terms of access to health care and health status.
- U.S. women report the least positive experiences among the 11 countries studied. They have the greatest burden of chronic illness, highest rates of skipping needed health care because of cost, difficulty affording their health care, and are least satisfied with their care.
- More than one-third of women in the U.S. report skipping needed medical care because of costs, a far higher rate than the other countries included in the study.
- Nearly 80 percent of the patients who looked up things online before seeing a doctor reported that their searches actually improved their experience. (Source: Anthony M. Cocco, a doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, and the lead author on a recent scientific study about the search habits of people before they show up in an E.R.)
- In one study, researchers found that only one of the top 54 results for “endometriosis” — the subject of over 4.5 million searches annually — led to a page that contained what was deemed to be accurate information about the condition.
- The study’s author recommends skipping the kind of scientific papers you might find on Google Scholar or PubMed; they often contain unusual cases and bewildering terminology.