notable quotable
‘Oh my gosh, it's about to get so much worse’
That was what political scientist Miranda Yaver thought to herself when she saw a new report from the Commonwealth Fund on health care inequities between five racial and ethnic groups. The report, which covers 2022 - 2024, finds promising signs for minimizing health disparities. But, given the upheaval and attacks on DEI over the last year, many experts fear the documented gains may be short lived. Read more from STAT’s Anil Oza.
medicine
Who is prescribing antipsychotics to people with dementia?
For older adults, medications like antipsychotics come with a heightened risk of delirium or a fall. Despite this, prescriptions of drugs that affect cognition are surging among seniors. A study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open analyzed data from 2008 to 2021 to identify where it’s happening. Researchers found that older adults are disproportionately prescribed these meds in acute and post-acute care settings like emergency rooms and inpatient facilities. This was particularly true for people with dementia — over the study period, 43% of antipsychotic prescriptions for people with dementia were initiated in acute or post-acute settings, despite the fact that those visits made up a much smaller percentage of total clinical encounters.
There is a caveat: researchers assumed where the prescription was made based on the patient’s most recent clinical visit. Still, the data also showed that once people were prescribed antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepine hypnotics, or anticholinergics, more than half continued to take them a year later. The authors believe their findings show that efforts to reduce these prescriptions should focus on acute and post-acute settings.
drugs
Supreme Court hears case on ‘skinny labeling’
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a wonky but important controversy known as “skinny labeling.” As STAT’s Ed Silverman explains, it’s basically a carve-out tactic used by generic drug companies seeking regulatory approval to market a medicine for a specific use, but not other patented uses for which a brand-name drug is prescribed.
Wonky indeed, but it’s a problem that could have a real impact on health care — without skinny labeling, some experts predict that patients could face higher drug prices for longer, ultimately leading to worse health outcomes. Read more from Ed on what you should know ahead of today’s arguments.
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