Policies & Guidelines

The initiative to improve end-of-life care in the United States is taking center stage, and it is about time. The US population is aging, and the number of older Americans with comorbidities is growing.
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The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has responded to the chorus of voices calling for less complex rules governing electronic health records (EHRs) by not adopting the Voluntary 2015 Edition Electronic Health Record Certification Criteria.
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A survey of patients with cancer and caregivers about the benefits they would like Medicare to cover in their last 6 months of life uncovered large gaps with the benefits that Medicare currently offers (Taylor DH Jr, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2014;32:3163-3168).
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The high cost of cancer care follows patients well into survivorship, as annual medical costs and losses in productivity exceed those of people without cancer by 50% to 100%, a study for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed (Ekwueme DU, et al. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2014;63:505-510).
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San Diego, CA—Tobacco researchers and regulators lauded progress in tobacco control, but they emphasized that the health burden of tobacco use continues, reflecting the expanding list of diseases caused or exacerbated by tobacco.
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Hollywood, FL—Cancer survivorship guidelines have been expanded to include the management of neuropathic pain and cancer-associated cognitive dysfunction, said speakers at the 2014 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) meeting.
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Cancer centers are ramping up their efforts to create survivorship care plans (SCPs) for all of their patients. However, according to a new survey conducted in 2013, they still have far to go before January 1, 2015, when the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) accreditation requirement of creating SCPs for all patients comes into effect (Birken SA, et al. J Cancer Educ. 2014 April 6. Epub ahead of print)
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In passing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, Congress had as one of its central goals the creation of new, innovative ways of paying for and delivering healthcare services. With this goal in mind, the ACA established the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), which is tasked with developing new payment and service delivery models to “demo” and, if successful, to eventually roll out nationwide.
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In recent years, an increasing number of drug shortages have threatened public health by reducing—if not eliminating—patient access to critical pharmaceuticals.
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