ASPE Issue Brief

Beginning in mid-March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on health care utilization. The impact on patients, their families and the health care system was significant.

This ASPE issue brief examines changes in Medicare fee-for-service primary care visits and use of telehealth at the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE). This brief seeks to address the issue of how and whether the Medicare telehealth flexibilities introduced to address the COVID-19 pandemic may have helped maintain access to primary health care during the PHE.

Nursing homes employ large proportions of their workforce at the minimum wage. This project sought to understand the potential impacts of federal minimum wage increases on nursing staff hours and labor costs of nursing homes.

This brief uses a proprietary dataset of electronic health records to describe the prevalence rates of chronic health conditions associated with a higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 among people with a history of homelessness. The paper found that for many of the health conditions examined, people with a history of homelessness have greater prevalence than the general population.

This study examined the characteristics of people who do not report having a diagnosis of dementia, despite a documented diagnosis by a health care provider, to health understand the factors that may contributed to their lack of awareness or failure to report. Understanding these factors is a key to taking steps to increasing awareness.

This study sought to identify the amount of overlap among three methods of identifying people with dementia, and to obtain national estimates of the number of people with dementia. It also explored key characteristics of people identified as having dementia by the various methods, to understand potential causes and implications of differences for policy and practice.

Functional Trajectories at the End of Life for Individuals with Dementia: Final Report Ila H. Broyles, PhD; Amy Huebeler, BS; Ira Dave, MS; Emily Graf, BA; Qinghua Li, PhD; Lauren Palmer, PhD; Zhanlian Feng, PhD; and Sarita L.

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, is a neurocognitive disease affecting an individual’s cognitive function and behavior. Dementia is a leading cause of death and is particularly prevalent at the end of life (EOL) in older adults.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers to and facilitators of licensing, credentialing, and insurance reimbursement for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers across the nation.

Child support programs use various strategies called “enforcement tools” to collect critical monetary support for custodial families from noncustodial parents. The enforcement of child support is intended to encourage parental responsibility so that children receive financial, emotional, and medical support from both parents, even when they live in separate households.