Closer Look
Cautionary tale for private equity in mental health care
Molly Ferguson for STAT
What happens when private equity comes for mental health care? In a new investigation, STAT's Olivia Goldhill offers a cautionary tale in Mindpath Health, a network of over 100 therapy clinics that private equity firms consolidated under a single roof in 2021.
Olivia spoke to a dozen former Mindpath employees and contractors, who described a company dominated by a desperate focus on growth, and a need to convert patients into profits — fast. Therapists were pressured to cram in as many patients as possible and to recommend transcranial magnetic stimulation, a lucrative treatment for the company. They were paid for each patient successfully referred for evaluation.
The result was layoffs, some of which left patients without support, and a shift toward psychiatrists who can see far more patients in a day than talk therapists. A Mindpath executive blamed its struggles on poor insurance payment rates, saying, "We tried to break barriers, and weren't as successful as we wanted." Read more.
public health
Fewer Americans living with unhealthy air, report finds
Scientists have long known the damage polluted air can wreak on our health, burning our lungs, disrupting our cardiovascular system, and, recent research suggests, raising our risk for neurodegenerative conditions. Nevertheless, 120 million people in the U.S. still live in areas with unhealthy air quality, according to the annual "State of the Air" report from the American Lung Association, released today. Other findings from the report, which looked at data from 2019 to 2021, include:
- 120 million people is actually an improvement, a decline of 17.6 million from the 2022 report, which analyzed data from 2018 to 2020.
- The improvement largely comes from lower levels of ozone, which the report attributes in part to a shift away from coal power.
- Still, a disproportionate share — 54% — of the 120 million are people of color.
research
1 in 5 preprints on gold-standard Covid trials weren't published after a year
Preprints were essential early in the pandemic, allowing researchers to quickly communicate new findings in a deadly emergency without waiting for peer review. But they could also be vectors for poor or inaccurate information, such as the key early study on hydroxychloroquine.
In a new JAMA study, researchers looked at every preprint from a Covid-19-related randomized controlled trial released in 2020 and 2021. They had blinded reviewers examine both how complete the abstracts were, in terms of including all the needed information, and how much spin they had, meaning if the writers over-extrapolated their findings or overemphasized secondary endpoints. They also did the same for many of the published versions of the studies.
The reviewers found that published versions were generally similar to the preprints in completeness and spin. However, about 1 in 5 preprints weren't published within 12 months of release, and these were particularly incomplete and spun, indicating that journals do select for "desirable qualities" and physicians should exercise caution in adopting treatments from preprints alone.
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