Cost concerns keep older adults from seeking care

Worries about what emergency care might cost them have kept some older adults from seeking medical attention even when they felt they might need it, a new study shows. In all, 22% of older adults who may have needed care from the emergency department didn’t go because of concerns about what they might have to pay, according to the new […]

Hospital parking fees contribute to financial toxicity for cancer patients

Transportation to and from cancer centers for outpatient cancer treatments has been identified as one of the two most impactful out-of-pocket costs that cancer patients and their families incur, along with food costs. In an upcoming issue of the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, published by Elsevier, a team of radiation oncology resident physicians and a biostatistician from the University of […]

Community pharmacy-led vaccination scheme helped thousands of patients overcome hesitancy around Covid-19 jabs

An award-winning scheme that saw community pharmacists support patients to understand the benefits of being jabbed against Covid-19 and overcome initial hesitancy proved hugely successful, new research by an expert from Kingston University has shown. The Covid Champion scheme was launched by the NHS South East London Integrated Care System in July last year, at a time when there was […]

Physicians with beliefs about long-term harms of benzodiazepine are less likely to prescribe it

Despite the continuing growth of benzodiazepine (BZD)-related overdoses, BZD prescription rates have held constant. Much is unknown about how a doctor’s own beliefs about BZD use and potential harm to patients might influence their willingness to prescribe the drug. Using a Medicare database, researchers identified primary care providers who had prescribed a BZD in 2017 and surveyed a random sample […]

Self-driven healthcare can improve health outcomes and reduce costs

A vision for building sustainable, self-driven healthcare spanning primary care, secondary care and the wider health and social care system has been set out by medical innovators writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Self-driven healthcare (SDH) is an umbrella term introduced by Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, to conceptualise aspects of healthcare delivery that can […]

Suicide prevention: the role of the community pharmacy team

Hayley Gorton is an experienced clinical pharmacist who has specialised in mental health. As a senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield she leads a research team with a special interest in self-harm and suicide prevention. In this series of short videos, she describes her research findings and the ways in which community pharmacy teams can contribute to suicide prevention. […]

The community pharmacy role in suicide prevention

The inclusion of antidepressants in the New Medicine Service for community pharmacists provides a good opportunity for pharmacist to provide extra support for patients at a critical time, says Dr Hayley Gorton, senior lecturer in pharmacy practice at the University of Huddersfield and suicide prevention researcher. [embedded content] Pharmacists and pharmacy teams that want to find out more about contributing […]

Greater uptake of breast cancer screening if appointments are pre-booked

The study, published today in the Journal of Medical Screening, found that issuing pre-booked appointments, rather than invitations to book an appointment, could lead to substantially greater uptake of breast cancer screening. The results suggest that an additional 100 cancers could have been detected by screening in London between September 2020 and March 2021 if pre-booked appointments had been used throughout […]