In her GrantWatch column, Lee L. Prina highlights foundations supporting long-term care efforts around the country. Projects focus on the needs of caregivers, insurance for long-term services and supports, and assisted living for people dually enrolled
in Medicare and Medicaid. The column features insights into Johns Hopkins’ Community Aging in Place—Advancing Better Living for Elders program, a documentary on COVID-19’s impact on long-term care, and more.
The April 2021 issue of Health Affairs includes articles on some of our most popular topics: access to care, how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects coverage, the effects of health spending policies, and much more.
The issue includes research on:
Out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries with incomes just above the coverage "cliff”
How the use of medication to treat opioid use disorder by individuals referred to treatment by a criminal justice agency differed in states that expanded Medicaid compared to those that did not
The ACA’s effect on use of long-acting reversible contraceptives for women enrolled in high-deductible health plans
How coverage compared for women before and after giving birth in states that did and did not expand Medicaid after the ACA’s implementation
The costs associated with urgent care centers, surprise billing for emergency department use, referrals made after telemedicine visits in a commercially insured population, and medical device company payments to physicians
Accounting for patients’ social risk factors when adjusting quality metrics used to judge hospital performance
Eviction And Health: A Vicious Cycle Exacerbated By A Pandemic
A new health policy brief from Health Affairs with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation highlights the prevalence of eviction and how additional consequences of COVID-19 have affected the health of evicted households and their communities. This
brief joins Health Affairs’ ongoing series of policy briefs on the social determinants of health.It is authored by Gracie Himmelstein and Matthew Desmond, researchers from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Desmond is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
Nursing Homes Have A Staff Turnover Crisis—Even Before COVID-19
Nursing homes are challenging places to work. David Grabowski of Harvard Medical School notes in
today's episode of A Health Podyssey, "We knew the nursing home system was broken before the COVID-19 pandemic."
Grabowski recently coauthored two papers in our March 2021 issue on the topic of nursing home staffing. One article noted that Medicare's new patient-driven payment model resulted in reductions in therapy staffing in skilled nursing facilities. A second found that the mean annual nursing staff turnover rate was an eye-popping 128 percent.
Post-pandemic, the implications of a nursing home's high staffing turnover rate is clear: it could lead to health and safety risks for residents.
Caroline Kelly, William F. Parker, and Harold A. Pollack
Drug Pricing On The Agenda For Massive Infrastructure Bill
Listen to Chris Fleming and Washington University's Rachel Sachs break down H.R. 3, which contains a series of far-reaching drug pricing reforms. Provisions of H.R. 3 could be included as part of a massive infrastructure package proposal.
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewedjournalat the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by
Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.
