JAMA network open
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Although hospitalizations for injection drug use-associated infective endocarditis (IDU-IE) have increased during the opioid crisis, utilization of and mortality associated with receipt of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) after discharge from the hospital among patients with IDU-IE are unknown. ⋯ In this cohort study, receipt of MOUD was associated with reduced mortality after hospitalization for injection drug use-associated endocarditis only in the month it was received. Efforts to improve MOUD initiation and retention after IDU-IE hospitalization may be beneficial.
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Comparative Study
Association of Peer Comparison Emails With Electronic Health Record Documentation of Cancer Stage by Oncologists.
Systematically capturing cancer stage is essential for any serious effort by health systems to monitor outcomes and quality of care in oncology. However, oncologists do not routinely record cancer stage in machine-readable structured fields in electronic health records (EHRs). ⋯ In a quality improvement pilot trial, peer comparison emails were associated with a substantial increase in oncologist use of the structured field in the EHR to document stage of disease.
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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act broadened insurance coverage, partially through voluntary state-based Medicaid expansion. ⋯ In this cohort study, state-level expansion of Medicaid was associated with increased Medicaid coverage for men with higher-risk prostate tumors but did not appear to affect treatment patterns at a population level. This may be related to the finding that Medicaid coverage was not associated with increased treatment rates compared with those without insurance.
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Chest radiography is the most common diagnostic imaging examination performed in emergency departments (EDs). Augmenting clinicians with automated preliminary read assistants could help expedite their workflows, improve accuracy, and reduce the cost of care. ⋯ These findings suggest that it is possible to build AI algorithms that reach and exceed the mean level of performance of third-year radiology residents for full-fledged preliminary read of AP frontal chest radiographs. This diagnostic study also found that while the more complex findings would still benefit from expert overreads, the performance of AI algorithms was associated with the amount of data available for training rather than the level of difficulty of interpretation of the finding. Integrating such AI systems in radiology workflows for preliminary interpretations has the potential to expedite existing radiology workflows and address resource scarcity while improving overall accuracy and reducing the cost of care.