Journal of general internal medicine
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Health-related social needs, such as food insecurity, housing instability, and lack of transportation, are associated with worse health outcomes, and are increasingly the focus of health-related social needs interventions within healthcare. Adoption of health-related social needs interventions is often justified by the potential to reduce healthcare costs. However, this can present a conundrum to clinicians. ⋯ In cases where health-related social needs interventions improve health but are not cost-saving, these two types of justifications can conflict. We provide a framework for considering these issues, and an agenda for scholarly work on this topic. Ultimately, if promoting patient and public health are key values for our profession, then understanding when to emphasize values-based care, rather than simply value-based care, is crucial to fulfilling our professional duty.
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The Internet has become a leading source of health information accessed by patients and the general public. It is crucial that this information is reliable and accurate. ⋯ This comprehensive systematic review demonstrated suboptimal quality of online health information. Therefore, the Internet at the present time does not provide reliable health information for laypersons. The quality of online health information requires significant improvement which should be a mandate for policymakers and private and public organizations.
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Guidelines recommend most benzodiazepine (BZD) treatment be short-term, though chronic BZD use is increasing. ⋯ A small minority of patients prescribed chronic BZD in a given year are no longer prescribed BZDs 1 year later. There is significant variation in the likelihood of discontinuation accounted for by non-clinical factors such as race, geography, and a patient's provider, which had a stronger association with the odds of discontinuation than almost every other patient-level variable. Provider-facing elements of interventions to reduce BZD prescribing may be critical.