Research

How much should health care providers adhere to clinical guidelines? While recent health policy has focused on increasing adherence, some experts argue that deviations from guidelines can be warranted. To address this question, I examine discretion in one clinical decision: the diagnosis of hypertension, defined as blood pressure ≥140/90 mmHg. Hypertension is the single most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and while its clinical guideline is simple, diagnosis can be challenging because blood pressure is a noisy measure of risk and often overstated in clinical settings. Using bunching estimation and electronic health records from over 600,000 patients in Chile I find that providers adjust the blood pressure of up to 62% of patients who test just above the threshold, using their discretion to turn a positive test for hypertension into a negative. This behavioral response leads to a more accurate classification of patients in terms of their cardiovascular risk, as measured by future hospitalizations, but no change in levels of hospitalizations. I find that discretionary decisions are consistent with providers' use of heuristics and private information. These findings emphasize the significance of clinical expertise in the diagnostic process and suggest that policies promoting universal adherence to guidelines may not be optimal given variation in the quality of guidelines.

We study how reminding high-risk patients with chronic disease of their upcoming primary care appointments impacts their health care and behaviors. We leverage a natural experiment in Chile’s public healthcare system that sent reminders before preventative care appointments to over 300,000 patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension across 315 public primary care clinics between 2013 and 2018. Employing both a difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approach on national administrative patient-level data, we show that reminders increased preventative care visits, which led to more health screenings and improved medication adherence. In this at-scale program, we find substantial variation in implementation fidelity across clinics, which, once accounted for increases our estimates by over a third. Reminders also increased hospitalizations and reduced in-hospital mortality, suggesting an improvement in timely care-seeking behavior among high-risk patients. Our findings inform healthcare settings where patients must first visit their primary care provider for approval before undergoing tests, receiving medication prescriptions, or getting referrals to other specialists. Through intervening at the first step in the cascade of care, we find that a simple intervention like reminders can have large and meaningful downstream effects.

We examined the impact of sugar exposure within 1000 days since conception on diabetes and hypertension, leveraging quasi-experimental variation from the end of the United Kingdom’s sugar rationing in September 1953. Rationing restricted sugar intake to levels within current dietary guidelines, yet consumption nearly doubled immediately post-rationing. Using an event study design with UK Biobank data comparing adults conceived just before or after rationing ended, we found that early-life rationing reduced diabetes and hypertension risk by about 35% and 20%, respectively, and delayed disease onset by 4 and 2 years. Protection was evident with in-utero exposure and increased with postnatal sugar restriction, especially after six months when solid foods likely began. In-utero sugar rationing alone accounted for about one third of the risk reduction.

Objectives: In 2018, CMS established reimbursement for the first Medicare-covered artificial intelligence (AI)–enabled clinical software: CT fractional flow reserve (FFRCT) to assist in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. This study quantified Medicare utilization of and spending on FFRCT from 2018 through 2022 and characterized adopting hospitals, clinicians, and patients.
Study Design: Analysis, using 100% Medicare fee-for-service claims data, of the hospitals, clinicians, and patients who performed or received coronary CT angiography with or without FFRCT.
Methods: We measured annual trends in utilization of and spending on FFRCT among hospitals and clinicians from 2018 through 2022. Characteristics of FFRCT-adopting and nonadopting hospitals and clinicians were compared, as well as the characteristics of patients who received FFRCT vs those who did not.
Results: From 2018 to 2022, FFRCT billing volume in Medicare increased more than 11-fold (from 1083 to 12,363 claims). Compared with nonbilling hospitals, FFRCT-billing hospitals were more likely to be larger, part of a health system, nonprofit, and financially profitable. FFRCT-billing clinicians worked in larger group practices and were more likely to be cardiac specialists. FFRCT-receiving patients were more likely to be male and White and less likely to be dually enrolled in Medicaid or receiving disability benefits.
Conclusions: In the initial 5 years of Medicare reimbursement for FFRCT, growth was concentrated among well-resourced hospitals and clinicians. As Medicare begins to reimburse clinicians for the use of AI-enabled clinical software such as FFRCT, it is crucial to monitor the diffusion of these services to ensure equal access.

Private sector engagement in health reform has been suggested to help reduce healthcare inequities in sub-Saharan Africa, where populations with the most need seek the least care. We study the effects of African Health Markets for Equity (AHME), a cluster randomized controlled trial carried out in Kenya from 2012-2020 at 199 private health clinics. AHME included four clinic-level interventions: social health insurance, social franchising, SafeCare quality-of-care certification program, and business support. This paper evaluates whether AHME increased the capacity of private health clinics to serve poor clients while maintaining or enhancing the quality of care provided. At endline, clinics that received AHME were 14.5 percentage points (pp) more likely to be empaneled with the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), served 51% more NHIF clients, and served more clients from the middle 3 quintiles of the wealth distribution compared to control clinics. Comparing individuals living in households near AHME treatment and control clinics (N=8241), AHME led to a 6.7pp increase in the probability of holding any health insurance on average. We did not find any additional effect of AHME on insurance holding among poor households. We measured quality of care using a standardized patient (SP) experiment (N=596 SP-provider interactions) where recruited and trained SPs were randomized to present as either “not poor”, and able to afford all services provided, or “poor” by telling the provider they could only afford approximately 300 Kenyan Shillings (US$3) in fees. We found that poor SPs received lower levels of both correct and unnecessary services, and AHME did not affect this. More work must be done to ensure clients of all wealth levels receive high quality care.

Missed clinic appointments or no-shows burden health care systems through inefficient use of staff time and resources. Scheduling software combined with automatically sent appointment reminders shows promise to improve clinics’ management through timely cancellations and re-scheduling, but at-scale evidence is missing. We study a nationwide text message appointment reminder program in Chile implemented at primary care clinics for patients with chronic disease. Using longitudinal clinic-level data, we find that the program did not change the number of visits by chronic patients eligible to receive the reminder, but visits from other patients ineligible to receive reminders increased by 5.0% in the first year and 7.4% in the second. Clinics treating more chronic patients and those with a relatively younger patient population benefited more from the program. Scheduling systems combined with automatic appointment reminders were effective in increasing clinics’ ability to care for more patients, likely due to timely cancellations and re-scheduling.

We use standardized patients to study the effects of a patient demanding one of two possible inappropriate medicines, as examples of trade-offs providers might make between risks, profits, and patient satisfaction. At private clinics in Kenya, demanding a deworming medicine significantly increased its rate of dispensing to 35% (95% CI: 25-44) compared to 3% (95% CI: 0-7) without demanding. Demanding an antibiotic did not change its probability of dispensing. These results show private providers appear to account for both business-driven benefits and individual health impacts when making prescribing decisions.

Background: Social distancing and stay-at-home orders are critical interventions to slow down person-to-person transmission of COVID-19. While these societal changes help to contain the pandemic, they also have unintended negative consequences, including anxiety and depression. We developed StayWell, a daily skills-based SMS text messaging program, to mitigate COVID-19 related depression and anxiety symptoms among people who speak English and Spanish in the United States.

Objective: This paper describes the changes in the anxiety and depression levels of participants in the StayWell program after 60 days of exposure to skills-based SMS text messages.

Methods: We used self-administered, empirically supported web-based questionnaires to assess the demographic and clinical characteristics of StayWell participants. Anxiety and depression were measured using the 2-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-2) scale and the 8-item Patient Health Quesstionanire-8 (PHQ-8) scale at baseline and 60-day timepoints. We used paired t-tests to detect the change in PHQ-8 and GAD-2 scores from baseline to follow-up measured 60 days later.

Results: The analytic sample includes 193 participants who completed both the baseline and 60-day exit questionnaires. At the 60-day time point, there were statistically significant reductions in both PHQ-8 and GAD-2 scores from baseline. We found an average reduction of -1.72 (95% CI: -2.35, -1.09) in PHQ-8 scores and -0.48 (95% CI: -0.71, -0.25) in GAD-2 scores. This translated to an 18.5% and 17.2% reduction in mean PHQ-8 scores and GAD-2, respectively.

Conclusions: StayWell is a low-intensity, cost-effective, and accessible population-level mental health intervention. Participation in StayWell focused on COVID-19 mental health coping skills and was related to improved depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition to improvements in outcomes, we found high levels of engagement during the 60-day intervention period. Text messaging interventions could serve as an important public health tool for disseminating strategies to manage mental health. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04473599

Background: Indigenous peoples worldwide carry a disproportionate tuberculosis burden. There is an increasing awareness of the effect of social determinants and proximate determinants such as alcohol use, overcrowding, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, substance misuse, HIV, food insecurity and malnutrition, and smoking on the burden of tuberculosis. We aimed to understand the potential contribution of such determinants to tuberculosis in Indigenous peoples and to document steps taken to address them.

Methods: We did a systematic review using seven databases (MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Global Health, BIOSIS Previews, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library). We identified English language articles published from Jan 1, 1980, to Dec 20, 2017, reporting the prevalence of proximate determinants of tuberculosis and preventive programmes targeting these determinants in Indigenous communities worldwide. We included any randomised controlled trials, controlled studies, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, case reports, and qualitative research. Exclusion criteria were articles in languages other than English, full text not available, population was not Indigenous, focused exclusively on children or older people, and studies that focused on pharmacological interventions.

Findings: Of 34 255 articles identified, 475 were eligible for inclusion. Most studies confirmed a higher prevalence of proximate determinants in Indigenous communities than in the general population. Diabetes was more frequent in Indigenous communities within high-income countries versus in low-income countries. The prevalence of alcohol use was generally similar to that among non-Indigenous groups, although patterns of drinking often differed. Smoking prevalence and smokeless tobacco consumption were commonly higher in Indigenous groups than in non-Indigenous groups. Food insecurity was highly prevalent in most Indigenous communities evaluated. Substance use was more frequent in Indigenous inhabitants of high-income countries than of low-income countries, with wide variation across Indigenous communities. The literature pertaining to HIV, crowding, and housing conditions among Indigenous peoples was too scant to draw firm conclusions. Preventive programmes that are culturally appropriate targeting these determinants appear feasible, although their effectiveness is largely unproven.

Interpretation: Indigenous peoples were generally reported to have a higher prevalence of several proximate determinants of tuberculosis than non-Indigenous peoples, with wide variation across Indigenous communities. These findings emphasise the need for community-led, culturally appropriate strategies to address smoking, food insecurity, and diabetes in Indigenous populations as important public health goals in their own right, and also to reduce the burden of tuberculosis.

Funding: Canadian Institutes of Health Research.