26,472 research outputs found
Restricted Access and Delays to HCV Treatment Among Medicaid Patients in Louisiana
Background: Many people living with chronic Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) have seen delays in accessing treatment or been denied entirely due to Medicaid restrictions requiring patients to meet certain criteria prior to receiving approval for medication pre-authorization.
Methods: This study identified a cohort of Medicaid-insured patients with chronic HCV infection within New Orleans, LA. Patient medical records were reviewed and information regarding HCV care was gathered. This study sought to determine the degree to which HCV care was delayed for this population and describe common reasons for prior-authorization denials for direct-acting antiviral (DAA) medications.
Results: For this population of Medicaid-insured patients with HCV RNA assay-confirmed chronic infection, the average number of days it took to reach a specialist was three-times greater than the number of days it took to reach a primary care physician. After attending an appointment with a specialist to seek HCV care, patients experienced wait periods of an average of 150 days before being deemed eligible for treatment per Medicaid requirements. After being deemed eligible for treatment, patients experienced an average wait period of 194.4 days to initiation of treatment, with low fibrosis status being cited as the most common reason for treatment delay.
Conclusion: This population of Medicaid-insured patients in New Orleans, LA with chronic HCV infection experienced delays in treatment related to reduced accessibility of a specialist who was eligible to request DAA prior-authorization. Prior-authorization was most frequently denied based on low fibrosis status or recent alcohol/drug use
Three dimensional massive scalar field theory and the derivative expansion of the renormalization group
We show that non-perturbative fixed points of the exact renormalization
group, their perturbations and corresponding massive field theories can all be
determined directly in the continuum -- without using bare actions or any
tuning procedure. As an example, we estimate the universal couplings of the
non-perturbative three-dimensional one-component massive scalar field theory in
the Ising model universality class, by using a derivative expansion (and no
other approximation). These are compared to the recent results from other
methods. At order derivative-squared approximation, the four-point coupling at
zero momentum is better determined by other methods, but factoring this out
appropriately, all our other results are in very close agreement with the most
powerful of these methods. In addition we provide for the first time, estimates
of the n-point couplings at zero momentum, with n=12,14, and the order
momentum-squared parts with n=2 ... 10.Comment: 33 pages, 1 eps figure, 7 tables; TeX + harvmac; version to appear in
Nucl. Phys.
Exact solutions of charged wormhole
In this paper, the backreaction to the traversable Lorentzian wormhole
spacetime by the scalar field or electric charge is considered to find the
exact solutions. The charges play the role of the additional matter to the
static wormhole which is already constructed by the exotic matter. The
stability conditions for the wormhole with scalar field and electric charge are
found from the positiveness and flareness for the wormhole shape function.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, no figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D(2001
Branching Rules for Supercuspidal Representations of SL_2(k)
The restriction of a supercuspidal representation of SL_2(k), for k a local
nonarchimedean field, to a maximal compact subgroup decomposes as a
multiplicity-free direct sum of irreducible representations. We explicitly
describe this decomposition in the case that the residual characteristic is
odd, and determine how the spectrum of this decomposition varies as a function
of the parameters describing the supercuspidal representation.Comment: 30 pages; minor reorganization to previous version. Accepted to
Journal of Algebr
Wrongful Birth in the Abortion Context - Critique of Exisiting Case Law and Proposal for Future Actions
Survival with Treated and Well-Controlled Blood Pressure: Findings from a Prospective Cohort Study.
AIM: To compare survival and incident cardiovascular disease between normotensive, untreated hypertensive, treated and poorly-controlled hypertensive and treated and well-controlled hypertensive adults.
METHODS AND RESULTS: Data from the British Regional Heart Study (men) and British Women's Heart and Health Study (women) were used (Nâ=â6476). Blood pressure and treatment were assessed at baseline (1998-2001) when participants were aged 60-79 years and participants were followed up for a median of 8 years. Date and cause of death were obtained from death certificates and non-fatal cardiovascular disease events were obtained from repeat detailed medical record reviews. Of the whole cohort 52% of women and 49% of men had untreated hypertension and a further 22% and 18%, respectively, had poorly treated hypertension. Just 3% of women and 4% of men had treated and well controlled hypertension and 23% and 29%, respectively, were normotensive. Compared to normotensive individuals, incident cardiovascular disease (fatal and non-fatal) was increased in those with poorly-controlled hypertension (Hazard Ratio (HR): 1.88; 95%CI: 1.53, 2.30), those with untreated hypertension (HR 1.46; 95%CI 1.22, 1.75) and those who were well-controlled hypertension (HR 1.38; 95%CI 0.94, 2.03). Adjustment for baseline differences in mean blood pressure between the groups resulted in attenuation of the increased risk in the poorly-controlled (1.52 (1.18, 1.97) and untreated groups (1.21 (0.97, 1.52), but did not change the association in the well-controlled group. All-cause mortality was also increased in all three hypertension groups but estimates were imprecise with wide confidence intervals.
CONCLUSIONS: Half of women and men aged 60-79 in Britain had untreated hypertension and only a very small proportion of those with diagnosed and treated hypertension were well controlled. Those with hypertension, irrespective of whether this was treated and controlled or not, were at greater risk of future cardiovascular disease than those who are normotensive
Exactly Soluble Quantum Wormhole in Two Dimensions
We are presenting a quantum traversable wormhole in an exactly soluble
two-dimensional model. This is different from previous works since the exotic
negative energy that supports the wormhole is generated from the quantization
of classical energy-momentum tensors. This explicit illustration shows the
quantum-mechanical energy can be used as a candidate for the exotic source. As
for the traversability, after a particle travels through the wormhole, the
static initial wormhole geometry gets a back reaction which spoils the wormhole
structure. However, it may still maintain the initial structure along with the
appropriate boundary condition.Comment: v1. 13 pages, 1 figure, REVTeX3; v2. 1 Ref. added, REVTeX4, to appear
in Phys. Rev.
âSmall Has No Inside, Big Has No Outsideâ: Montrealâs Chinese Diaspora Breaks Out/In Music
Through ethnographic fieldwork undertaken from 2003 to 2010, discussion with local musicians, and analysis of concert programs, recordings, live performances, rehearsals, press reviews, musiciansâ websites and textual sources, the author examines the means by which the Chinese diasporic community in Montreal negotiates its cultural identity and exerts its agency through musical performance. The author also explores how the tangled relationships of regionally- diverse Chinese immigrants to their birthplaces and their chosen homeland are unravelled, reflecting simultaneous positions as âinsidersâ and âoutsiders.
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