Articles of Interest
JournalDoc is proud to work with a team of experts who understand the challenges faced by Healthcare Professionals and pleased to offer a weekly article of interest representing trends and new information affecting the study and practice of medicine.
What’s Interesting about this article?
- Time Restricted Eating has become a popular weight loss strategy because it is easier to do than counting calories.
- Whether time restricted eating without counting calories is effective has not been studied, so researchers randomly assigned participants to one of three groups – eight hours of eating per day (noon to 8 PM); calorie counting and a control group.
- Both time restricted eating and calorie counting resulted in an average weight loss of approximately 5 kg more than the control group over 12 months
JournalDoc Comments:
- This was a relatively small study with only 77 persons completing the study. However, the group was racially diverse, so findings are not confined to one race.
- Obesity is a major health issue with multiple associated comorbidities, so helpful to know that one can select whichever approach is easier for them to adhere to and lose 10-12 pounds over a 12-month period.
New England Journal of Medicine July 27, 2023
NEJM Commentary Article by Kyle and Song in July 27,2023 Issue
What’s Interesting about this article?
- Prior authorization is the number one source of frustration for practicing clinicians. Mandated by insurance companies, it requires multiple phone calls or faxes by busy clinicians or their staff to justify payment for hospitalizations, medications, or diagnostic procedures.
- Current procedures result in higher medical costs, clinician frustration and burn-out, with little impact on reducing utilization of services.
- CMS has proposed switching to electronic prior authorization with portals for both patients and provider, with insurer decisions within 7 days for standard submissions and 72 hours for expedited requests. Required details would be automatically transferred from the electronic health record.
- CMS forecasts savings of 10-20 billion over 10 years.
JournalDoc Comments:
- Use of the electronic medical record has resulted in an additional 2-3 hours of extra time for busy clinicians. Switching prior authorization to a platform that relies on the EMR will be greeted with great skepticism by health care providers.
- Insurers will be reluctant to change because current system results in lower costs and higher profits for them.
Link to Article in PubMed
Disclaimer: Article of the Week selections by JournalDoc physicians are independent, unbiased and have no commercial conflict of interest. JournalDoc does not support or endorse the findings or opinions expressed in the article. Findings in the article may need to be supported by further research and/or the consensus of experts.
Annals of Internal Medicine June, 2023
Study Design: Exploratory Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT); 5522 patients at 43 Centers in Australia and the Netherlands
What’s Interesting about this article?
- Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease world-wide, yet no drugs are available to prevent the disease from progressing.
- Colchicine has been used for many years to treat gout, but has not been tried in osteoarthritis patients.
- This study found that low dose colchicine resulted in fewer knee and hip replacements in Australia and the Netherlands.
Potential significance
Anti-inflammatories and exercise may help relieve the pain and disability of OA, but colchicine may actually slow the disease progression and remove the need for surgery.
Link to article abstract in PubMed
Disclaimer: Article of the Week selections by JournalDoc are independent, unbiased and have no commercial conflict of interest. JournalDoc does not support or endorse the findings in the article and may need to be supported by further research and/or the consensus of experts.
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