Health Care

As symptom severity for major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression increases, so do costs to health systems, according to a retrospective cohort study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

One year after patients initiated urgent start peritoneal dialysis in an integrated health care system, they experienced high survival and modality retention rates according to data published in Kidney Medicine.

Dialyze Direct announced its acquisition of Renew Dialysis, a provider of on-site dialysis in skilled nursing facilities in the U.S., from Saber Healthcare Group.

Healio announced the first year’s honorees of its new recognition program, Healio Honors, according to a press release.

Last week, the CDC updated its consumer COVID-19 mask guidance to say for the first time that people can wear N95 or KN95 respirators.

Vantage Health announced its partnership with Fresenius Medical North America and a new care agreement aimed at improving outcomes for patients with late-stage chronic kidney disease, according to a company press release.

What we’re seeing right now is very different than what we experienced with the COVID-19 surge back in December 2020.

Endoscopy centers have encountered significant challenges long before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Reimbursement for endoscopic procedures has gone down significantly in recent years while practice costs have increased. Given the realities of a complex and costly U.S. health care system and rising national debt, these trends are likely to continue. Adding pathology labs and anesthesia services as ancillary revenue streams has helped endoscopy centers in the past, but many of them have now exhausted these opportunities and are left with few mechanisms to compensate for the rapid narrowing of profit margins.

I am in a nine physician private practice in Providence, RI, with an academic affiliation to Brown University and the Lifespan hospital system. We have never seen it so busy and I’ve been in practice since 1997. I think it’s three things coming together in a perfect storm.

This month’s cover story features the perspectives of gastroenterologists looking back on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on gastrointestinal care.