Women skip their meds

Seguéing from women’s health to medical finances, we have this: Based on CDC data (the National Health Interview Survey), women are more likely than men to skip their meds because they can’t afford them.

[I]n 2021, 9.2 million adults ages 18 to 64 — about 1 in 10 — reported skipping, delaying or using less medication than prescribed over the past year to save money. Women led men when it came to this nonadherence: 9.1% versus 7%.

Takeaway: If you have patients you know are having trouble affording their meds, maybe take a little time — we know, we know — to help them find a co-pay program or even check whether the cash price is better than their co-pay.

So about those “non-profit” hospitals

It seems that, rather than using their proceeds to help people in need, non-profit hospitals are fattening their cash reserves — this while 41% of Americans have some form of medical debt. That’s what a study out of Rice University found by going over the financial records of 2,800 hospitals across the country.

It found that even when they took in more money, non-profit hospitals didn’t change their spending on charity care — they just added to their reserves. In contrast, higher profits in for-profit hospitals translated into more spending on charity care.

Cash reserves are important, of course, for weathering financial storms and keeping a good bond rating (read: easier to raise money), but it does raise the question of what “non-profit” is supposed to mean.

More bluntly, as the Rice press release puts it, this “calls into question the justification for nonprofit hospitals’ tax-exempt status.”

When dosage is fat-dependent

Just because infliximab doesn’t work for a patient with inflammatory bowel disease doesn’t actually mean it doesn’t work. (Your line is “Huh?”)

It seems that people with a high level of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) might require a larger dose — in fact, it might seem like the standard dose doesn’t work at all.

[C]linicians may need to reconsider prematurely discontinuing infliximab treatment in “non-responders” with higher VAT burden and instead consider adjusting the dose to achieve a higher drug concentration before declaring nonresponse.

To be clear, it’s not a matter of body mass or BMI, but specifically of the amount of VAT they carry.

Short Takes

Semaglutide is so good for diabetes….

A study from an Ohio State University and a group of those shifty Danes found that “oral semaglutide is more effective than empagliflozin, sitagliptin, or liraglutide in terms of reducing HbA1c together with body weight in patients with type 2 diabetes.”

Sea cukes for blood sugar

Eating sea cucumbers can help fight diabetes by reducing advanced glycation end products (AGEs), according to Aussie researchers.

“We found that processed dried sea cucumber with salt extracts and collagen can significantly inhibit AGEs by lowering a range of sugar related metabolites in the body and reducing the risk of diabetes.”

Yummy!