USC Schaeffer Institute

Controlling blood pressure is one of the most effective ways to save lives, but U.S. efforts have gone backward in the past decade. Schaeffer Nonresident Sr. Scholar Bob Kocher, writing in NEJM Group, outlines how this failure can become a success story if incentives are realigned to reward prevention and sustained control. That means redesigning payments and quality-improvement efforts so that clinicians, patients and payers can share success. AI-supported remote monitoring, team-based treatment protocols, and broader patient access to education, monitoring and effective treatment can also make a difference. “At root, the failure to control hypertension is a failure not of science but of system design,” Kocher writes with Sunny Kishore, MD, PhD of UCSF. With the right policies and leadership, they argue, substantial improvement is possible. 🔗 Read here: https://lnkd.in/gnwxBYG4 #HealthPolicy #Hypertension #ValueBasedCare #DigitalHealth #Prevention #HealthcareLeadership

PBMs often cite their low profit margins as evidence they don’t drive up drug costs. However, a new Schaeffer Center white paper demonstrates that these reportedly low margins are heavily influenced by PBMs’ accounting choices. Additionally, widespread consolidation in recent years has made it more difficult to assess PBM profitability as their financial results are bundled in broad business segments. As Congress weighs PBM reforms, authors Karen Mulligan and Darius Lakdawalla argue policymakers should consider requiring more transparency around the reporting of business lines within vertically integrated healthcare companies. 📰 Press release: https://lnkd.in/dhwauhA6 📃 White paper: https://lnkd.in/dJpmci3B #PBM #DrugCosts #DrugPricing #HealthPolicy #HealthEconomics #HealthcareResearch USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

📢 The USC Clinical Trial Recruitment Lab (CTRL) has awarded funding to support four research pilots focused on accelerating and improving #Alzheimers clinical trials through #AI and other digital strategies. While there is a robust pipeline of Alzheimer’s treatment candidates, recruitment remains a major hurdle. By expanding the toolkit of evidence-based recruitment strategies, CTRL aims to help promising therapies reach patients faster. Pilots will be led by Miriam Ashford of University of California-San Francisco (UCSF); Erika Barth Cottrell and Vijaya B. Kolachalama of OCHIN and Cognimark; Andrew Kiselica of University of Georgia (UGA); and Raeanne C. Moore, Ph.D. of University of California-San Diego (UCSD). Their innovative projects will explore the use of an AI-powered voice assistant to support remote recruitment, leverage electronic health records to identify potential trial candidates, and establish a digitally enabled, trial-ready cohort of rural older adults. The research teams recently shared their plans for testing tech-driven recruitment strategies at a CTRL symposium that brought together leaders from across the clinical trial ecosystem. 🔗Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e6e7kQyZ CTRL is a joint initiative between USC Schaeffer and the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) with funding from Gates Ventures and the American Heart Association. 📸 Pictured at the CTRL symposium, from top left clockwise: Lisa Renzi Hammond (UGA); colin depp (UCSD); Miriam Ashford (UCSF); and Vijaya Kolachalama (OCHIN-Cognimark). #AlzheimersResearch #ClinicalTrials #ArtificialIntelligence #ResearchFunding #ClinicalTrialRecruitment 

📊 The U.S. now spends $232 billion on care for people living with #dementia, representing a substantial economic burden on families and the healthcare system. A new interactive visualization from USC Schaeffer lets researchers and policymakers explore how medical spending for Medicare beneficiaries with dementia has changed across time, states, demographics and care settings. By making spending trends easy to examine, this tool can help inform policy discussions on dementia care and costs. 🔎 Explore the data here: https://lnkd.in/gB5tWDXc This visualization comes from the U.S. Cost of Dementia project, which produces comprehensive, national, annual estimates of dementia-related costs and builds research capacity to address the economic consequences of dementia. USC Sol Price School of Public Policy USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences #HealthEconomics #HealthcareCosts #HealthPolicy #PublicHealth #Aging #Alzheimers

🎥 The search for new #Alzheimers treatments depends on faster, more effective clinical trials. The USC Clinical Trial Recruitment Lab recently brought together leading experts from across the clinical trial ecosystem to explore promising recruitment strategies, how new digital tools can better connect with and support trial participants, and the barriers researchers continue to face. Key points from the event: ◾ A keynote from USC Schaeffer Founding Director Dana P Goldman on the value of early prevention ◾ Lessons learned from the field with researchers Mireille Jacobson, Eric Anderson MD PhD MBA FAAN, Jeffrey Burns, Doris Molina-Henry and Roy Yaari ◾ A pitch competition featuring the next big ideas on how technology can accelerate trial recruitment 👉 See the highlights below, and watch the full symposium here: https://lnkd.in/gXTrb6Pn CTRL is a joint initiative between USC Schaeffer and the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) with funding from Gates Ventures and the American Heart Association. #AlzheimersResearch #ClinicalTrials #TrialRecruitment #HealthPolicy

USC Schaeffer Sr. Scholar Glenn Melnick notes a critical but overlooked factor behind rising health insurance premiums: a post-COVID surge in prices paid by commercial insurers to hospitals. In a Health Affairs Forefront analysis, Prof. Melnick finds that commercial hospital prices per discharge in California rose 18% between the second quarters of 2022 and 2025, about double the growth in Medicare payments and a key inflation measure. The central question, he writes, is whether these sharp increases are a temporary “catch-up” to pandemic-era cost shocks or the beginning of a “new normal” of heightened hospital pricing power, with major implications for patients and employers. 🔗 Read here: https://lnkd.in/gxY4NMHZ USC Sol Price School of Public Policy USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences #HealthPolicy #HealthcareCosts #HospitalPricing #HealthInsurance 

Access to highly effective HIV prevention medication #PrEP is essential to ending the HIV epidemic. New research from USC Schaeffer Senior Scholar Dima Mazen Qato finds that in Los Angeles County — a national priority area for HIV prevention — only 1 in 5 pharmacies stock PrEP. And fewer than 2% of pharmacies prescribe it, even years after California became the first state to allow pharmacists to do so. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gTPxtmAE #HIVPrevention #PublicHealth #HealthPolicy #Pharmacy USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

It’s become routine: a new report warns that new drug launch prices outpace inflation, sparking a flurry of damning headlines. But that criticism misses the relevant question of whether value is increasing, writes USC Schaeffer Scholar Bill Padula in Health Affairs Forefront. “[W]e should retire lazy comparisons between drug prices and the CPI,” Prof. Padula writes. “The CPI tracks milk, rent, and shoes. Medicine tracks the expanding frontier of human capability. Holding pharmaceutical innovation to the same metric we use for breakfast cereal is not fiscal prudence, it’s conceptual confusion.” When value rises faster than inflation – and the evidence suggests it is – society gains even if launch prices climb, he writes. The challenge is crafting access and coverage policies that keep up. 📰 Read here: https://lnkd.in/gwhmhesS #HealthPolicy #DrugPrices #HealthEconomics #PharmaceuticalInnovation #ValueInHealthCare USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

With pharmacy closures accelerating nationwide, there’s a potential lifeline: Designating vulnerable community pharmacies as “critical access” may be the most immediate way of protecting patient access to essential pharmacy care, USC Schaeffer postdoctoral researcher Emily Gravlee writes in Health Affairs Forefront. The piece outlines key recommendations for states considering a critical access pharmacy designation: 📃 Read here: https://lnkd.in/gUv-mn5K USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

Even the most advanced medical technology means little if patients who need it can’t access it, USC Schaeffer Chief Scientific Officer Darius Lakdawalla testified before House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees last week. He told lawmakers that smart, forward-thinking regulatory reforms can spur creation and adoption of new technologies that make good health more accessible and affordable. Among Prof. Lakdawalla’s key recommendations: ◾ Reform Medicare’s coverage with evidence development (CED) program to improve evidence generation and coverage goals ◾ Transform Medicare Advantage into a lab for stimulating valuable investments in prevention ◾ Make healthcare prices more transparent in deliberate ways that serve today’s patients and future generations Read his full testimony: https://lnkd.in/g9UPpE5C USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences USC Sol Price School of Public Policy #HealthPolicy #HealthcareInnovation #PatientAccess #RegulatoryReform #Medicare #HealtEconomics