Courtney Van Houtven, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine), was the senior author on a recent publication in Annals of Internal Medicine entitled, "Dual Health Care System Use and High-Risk Prescribing in Patients With Dementia: A National Cohort Study."
In this retrospective cohort, Van Houtven and other investigators sought to examine potentially unsafe medication (PUM) prescribing among veterans with dementia who used a single healthcare system compared with those who were receiving prescriptions from dual systems. This comes in the wake of federal policy changes attempting to expand veteran access to non-Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) providers. The study found that, compared with VA-only users, those utilizing Medicare Part D (dual) had higher rates of PUM prescribing.
The publication has already been picked up by 14 news outlets, including Fox News and MedPage Today. Its Altmetric score is 132 (as of 12/11/16).
Citation:
Thorpe JM, Thorpe CT, Gellad WF, Good CB, Hanlon JT, Mor MK, Pleis JR, Schleiden LJ, Van Houtven CH. Dual Health Care System Use and High-Risk Prescribing in Patients With Dementia: A National Cohort Study. Ann Intern Med. [Epub ahead of print 6 December 2016] doi: 10.7326/M16-0551. PMID: 27919104. [Link] Full text.
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Follow Dr. Van Houtven on Twitter @chvanhoutven