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The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Dear John,

While advance care planning services can help patients inform providers
about their future treatment preferences, new research shows that few
Medicare patients actually engage in them.

Advance Care Planning Is On The Rise But Still Rare

Advance care planning is designed to help providers treat patients
according to their wishes and reduce unnecessary health care and
spending in their future treatment. It's associated with improved
care, lower rates of in-hospital deaths, and higher rates of hospice
use.

Fee-for-service Medicare covers these conversations between patients and
providers either as a stand-alone Medicare Part B service at any
outpatient visit or as an optional element of an annual wellness visit.

Makayla Palmer and coauthors studied the evolution of advance care
planning, the setting of these discussions, and the demographics of
participating patients.

The authors found steady growth in the number of fee-for-service
Medicare beneficiaries doing outpatient advance care planning

between 2016 and 2019, but prevalence remained below 7.5 percent for all
demographics. Their results also suggest that advance care planning
conversations at and apart from annual wellness visits may play
different roles.

For more on Medicare and access to care, read the April 2021 issue
.

In a new Health Affairs Blog post, Alice J. Chen and coauthors discuss
how insurer formulary preferences for biologic and biosimilar cancer
therapies

can restrict choice for physicians and pharmacists, negatively impacting
patients.

If you're enjoying our free COVID-19 content, blogs, and podcasts,
please consider supporting our work
.

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Your Daily Digest

Advance Care Planning For Medicare Beneficiaries Increased
Substantially, But Prevalence Remained Low

Makayla K. Palmer, Mireille Jacobson, and Susan Enguidanos

Insurer Formularies Complicate The Adoption Of Biosimilar Cancer
Therapies

Alice J. Chen, Priya Bhanot, Laura Gascue, Rocio Ribero, Rita Shane, and
Karen Van Nuys

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The Health Affairs Podcast Fellowship is an exciting new program for
US-based applicants. The program is intended for early- or
mid-early-stage career individuals with an interest in health policy
and storytelling.

The program is intended to support applicants who have an audio project
in mind to inform and educate the public. Applicants should have a
working knowledge of the topic and an idea of what's needed to
complete their project (interviews, data, field recordings, etc.).

Each fellow will produce a podcast series of at least four episodes
using interviews, background briefs, public data, Health Affairs
research, and other materials to tell the story.

Candidates are expected to be US-based print or radio journalists,
freelance storytellers, solo-preneurs, or academics. The fellowship is
designed to enable fellows to work independently over a five-month
period (June to October) to produce a podcast series/story of at least
four episodes, which Health Affairs will publish soon after.

Apply Today

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