Super excited to see that our Health Services, Policy & Practice Department PhD student Gray Babbs was chosen as a @ashecon Diversity Scholar! Gray does excellent work to understand outcomes of trans patients in our healthcare system and recently led a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine! jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

So excited that our terrific Health Services, Policy & Practice Department PhD student Geronimo was selected as a Soros fellow this year! It's been a privilege to work with him so far, and I'm so excited to see where his work goes next! Geronimo Bejarano Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH Brown University School of Public Health Brown University sph.brown.edu/news/2024-04-1…

I’m in today’s New York Times! Honored to have been selected as a PD Soros Fellowships Fellow out of the nearly 2,400 applicants. I’ve had the pleasure of having incredible help from so many people and there’s some specific people I would like to thank 1/4

Physician payment reform is in the air.

So I wanted to share our paper about the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

We find that the MSSP has had virtually no budget impact for CMS.

ACOs are not the answer to cost containment in Traditional Medicare.

tinyurl.com/32emjerw

Really enjoyed having the opportunity to talk w/ Alan R. Weil (he/him) about our recent Health Affairs paper evaluating the impact of county-level mandates on COVID-19 transmission on the Health Podyssey! Our study provides evidence that these mandates are effective at flattening the curve

In this article, we describe some of the high level proposed changes in this year's Medicare Advantage Advance Notice- tldr, not much to see but a couple steps in the right direction, with plenty more that can be done. Looking forward to seeing the final rule in a few weeks!

CAHPR traveled to DC last week for The Future of Medicare: The Rise of Medicare Advantage & What Comes Next! 'It was great to be able to get a group of experts together,' said David Meyers, 'to discuss solutions to one of the pressing domestic policy issues.' Andrew Ryan

For my friends doing international health systems research - please apply! CHeSS is an amazing Center.

Check out this new article led by terrific Health Services, Policy & Practice Department PhD student Gray Babbs where we find substantially higher rates of ED utilization among trans Medicare beneficiaries

This CMS change is generating a lot of justified alarm.

However, I doubt CMS will be persuaded to release physical files much longer. Given that, as researchers weigh in, I think it’s critically important to offer suggestions on how to improve the VRDC.

Link to the Google Doc here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1CD…

Additional edits and comments are welcome!

This policy change from CMSGov will do much to degrade the quality and timeliness of health policy research in the US.

While I understand the security concerns that motivated it, there has to be a middle ground that will efficiently balance security and access.

1/3

Agree with Adam Sacarny Aaron Schwartz this is super problematic! Lots of limitations with VRDC including $50k/user/year fees, software issues, integrating non-CMS data, and so many access barriers noted below. We all need to submit user comments. David Slusky Kosali Simon @ashecon

Massive change coming for academics that use CMSGov Medicare & Medicaid data…

CMS is phasing out ability for researchers to own/work on physical Medicare & Medicaid data.

Everyone must eventually migrate to Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC).

cms.gov/data-research/…

Big news for Brown University School of Public Health

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH is becoming the next Chair of Health Services, Policy & Practice Department

Huge gain for Brown University community and massive loss for HMS HCP Harvard Medical School BIDMC

Congrats, Ateev! Well-deserved!

dean.sph.brown.edu/news/2024-02-0…

So excited to welcome Ateev Mehrotra as our new chair of Health Services, Policy & Practice Department! Looking forward to seeing what new directions our terrific department can continue to grow in, and partnering to strengthen our fantastic PhD program!

Biden admin proposes -0.2% baseline payment cut for 2025 Medicare Advantage plans. Mostly due to the continued phase-in of a new risk adjustment system. But gov't still expects MA plans to get more money next year due to their intensive coding. Read more: statnews.com/2024/01/31/med…