From Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives and the Senate will be in session this week for floor voting and Committee business.
Healthcare Dive reminds us that the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society will hold its annual conference in Orlando, Florida, this week. In addition, Healthcare Dive notes several headliner presentations planned for that conference.
From the health equity front, the Wall Street Journal reports
The fatal overdose rate among Black people surpassed that for white people in the first year of the pandemic, as an increasingly lethal drug supply and Covid-19’s destabilizing effects exacted a heavy toll on vulnerable communities in the U.S.
The proliferation of the potent opioid fentanyl, and a pandemic that has added hazards for people who use drugs, are driving new records in U.S. overdose deaths, and Black communities have been hit especially hard. Black people often have uneven access to healthcare including effective drug treatment, putting them at high risk, researchers and public-health experts say.
The most recent full-year of federal data, through 2020, shows the rate of drug deaths among Black people eclipsed the rate in the white population for the first time since 1999, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles recently demonstrated.
What is an effective treatment for substance use disorder? The Journal adds
Researchers at the University of Michigan examining outpatient visits for substance use in recent years found white patients were three to four times as likely as Black patients to receive buprenorphine, a prescription medication to treat opioid dependence that is more readily available to people with health insurance or the means to pay out of pocket.
Health providers are more likely to direct Black patients to methadone, which is delivered by highly regulated opioid-treatment programs that often require daily visits to obtain the medication, researchers have found.
According to Sam Quinones’s books on the opioid and fentanyl problems plaguing our country, drug dealers hang out at methadone clinics.
On a related note, The Psychiatric Times informs us
The positive implications for screening for and treating individuals with SUDs are vast, from preventing HIV and hepatitis in injection-drug users to improving patients’ physical health, mental health, employment, and housing.
Elisa Gumm, DO, who is presenting on “Screening for Addiction in a 20-Minute Appointment” at the “Psychiatry for Non-Psychiatrists: The University of Arizona Update in Behavioral Medicine for Primary Care” conference, stated that “offering addiction interventions at every level reduces the overall costs to the person and society
Also, the New York Times reports on today’s front page about the serious logistical problems facing the federal and state governments as they seek to launch the new 988 suicide hotline on July 1, 2022.
Fierce Healthcare discusses the advantages of using teledentistry with rural patients.
Teledentistry enables rural access to care, lowers costs and helps provide preventive services, a new study has found.
The CareQuest Institute looked at data for patients in Oregon and Washington. The study included data from more than 60,100 individuals who had a dental visit either in person or through teledentistry in the second half of 2020.
Most (79%) patients with a teledentistry visit had a follow-up visit sometime in 2021, the vast majority of which were in person. Most (60%) had this visit within three weeks of their teledentistry visit, which primarily consisted of diagnostic and restorative services.