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More than one out of every 10 seniors enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan and living in a rural area switched to traditional Medicare in the last few years, prior to the pandemic. The switch was driven primarily due to low satisfaction with care access, according to a study recently published in Health Affairs from researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.

Dark skin is significantly underrepresented in medical literature and curricula, comprising an average of just 4.5% of images in medical textbooks. In response, clinicians of all licensures and specialties are often insufficiently trained to recognize disease patterns in patients of color. To confront this issue, Project IMPACT was created to raise awareness and adoption of educational and clinical resources and solutions that strengthen clinicians’ ability to accurately diagnose disease in black and brown skin and improve health equity.

In this week's episode of Tuning In to the C-Suite podcast, MHE's Briana Contreras spoke with Dr. Rob Kowal, chief medical officer of the Cardiac Rhythm and Heart Failure division at Medtronic. The two discussed how remote monitoring and IoT is changing healthcare and how remote technology is also gaining a wide-spread adoption to monitor patients at home who have chronic conditions like heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes.

In this latest episode of MHE Talks: Improving Patient Access podcast, Dennis Bourdette, M.D., professor emeritus of neurology in the School of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University, spoke with Peter Wehrwein, senior editor of MHE. Bourdette, a nationally recognized expert on multiple sclerosis, discussed step therapy, tiers, insurance approvals and the need for greater communication between physicians and insurers.

For several years, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has presented data showing that the United States faces a shortage of physicians in almost every specialty. In June 2020, the association issued its sixth annual report on the shortage, predicting that in just over a decade, the U.S. healthcare system would face a shortage of between 54,100 and 139,000 physicians in primary and specialty care.