Affiliates' Research in Medical Journals, Summer 2023

Many NBER-affiliated researchers publish some of their health-related findings in journals that preclude pre-publication distribution, and thus do not post them as NBER working papers. This is a partial listing of recent papers in this category by NBER affiliates.

Do PCI Facility Openings and Closures Affect AMI Outcomes Differently in High- vs Average-Capacity Markets? 
Shen Y, Krumholz HM, Hsia RY. JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions 16(10), May 2023, pp. 1129–1140.

Hospitals that provide percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) have disproportionately opened in areas with existing PCI services rather than in low income, minority, and rural communities. To examine how PCI center openings and closings have affected patient outcomes, this study examined 2,742,530 Medicare FFS patients with a principal diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) between January 2006 and December 2017 in all communities across the continental US. The researchers categorized the PCI capacity of communities (defined by Hospital Referral Regions) in the base years (2005–2006) using a regression-based approach to rank markets in terms of the percentage of patients who were admitted to PCI-capable hospitals. Communities ranked in the upper quartile were classified as having “high capacity,” and the remaining communities were classified as “average capacity” markets. In community fixed-effects regression models adjusting for patient demographic covariates, year, and a set of disease-related risk factors, PCI center openings within a 15-minute drive in average-capacity markets were associated with significant benefits in treatment access and outcomes for patients with AMI relative to patients in average-capacity markets without new openings. Specifically, in average-capacity markets, patients with AMI had a 6.5 percent relative increase in the likelihood of receiving revascularization on the day of admission, and an 8 percent increase in this likelihood during an in-hospital care episode, as well as an approximately 2.5 percent decrease in mortality across all timepoints studied. Closures of PCI services in average-capacity markets resulted in a 10.4 percent relative increase in patients with AMI being admitted to high-volume PCI hospitals and a 3.7 percent decrease in the likelihood of receiving same-day or in-hospital revascularization. None of these changes were observed for patients with AMI in high-capacity markets, suggesting that past a certain market saturation threshold, facility opening does not improve access or health outcomes.

Rear-Facing Child Safety Seat Effectiveness: Evidence from Motor Vehicle Crash Data 
Anderson DM, Peterson RW. Injury Prevention, March 2023.

Car safety seat (CSS) guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics were updated in 2018 to recommend that children ride rear-facing as long as possible, despite limited evidence from observational studies. While all states in the USA have a child restraint law on the books, many do not require the use of a rear-facing CSS for certain ages. Among those that do, even the strictest laws extend rear-facing requirements only to children under 2 years of age. This study analyzed data on all motor vehicle crashes involving children aged 0–4 years from 2011 to 2020 reported to the Kansas Department of Transportation, which collects detailed information on injury severity and whether those in restraints were riding rear-facing or forward-facing. Data included 11,366 rear-facing and 23,512 forward-facing children, with rates of rear-facing rising over time and peaking in 2018. In unadjusted logistic regression models, rear-facing CSS use was associated with a 14 percent reduction in the odds of suffering any injury versus riding in a forward-facing CSS (5.8 vs 6.7 percent of children). In models adjusted for a range of potential confounders — including child age, seat position in the vehicle, vehicle type and age, whether the driver was wearing a seatbelt, collision type, month, and year — rear-facing CSS use was associated with a 9 percent reduction in the odds of any injury relative to riding forward-facing. These estimates were driven entirely by children seated in the back outboard positions, which stresses the increased safety of riding in the middle back of the vehicle. Rear-facing CSS use was also negatively associated with incapacitating/fatal injuries, but these estimates had wide confidence intervals. The study findings suggest that requiring 0- through 4-year-olds to ride rear-facing would result in substantially fewer injuries.

Association of Early Seizure Prophylaxis with Posttraumatic Seizures and Mortality: A Meta-Analysis with Evidence Quality Assessment 
Coelho LMG, Blacker D, Hsu J, Newhouse JP, Westover MB, Zafar SF, Moura LMVR. Neurology Clinical Practice 13(3), June 2023, e200145.

Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care among LGBT Adults, 2013–19 
Bolibol A, Buchmueller TC, Lewis B, Miller S. Health Affairs 42(6), June 2023.

The Evolution of Excess Deaths in the United States during the First Two Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic 
Ruhm CJ. American Journal of Epidemiology, May 2023.

Use of Race in Clinical Algorithms 
Basu A. Science Advances 9(21), May 2023, eadd2704.

Nursing Home Infection Control Strategies during the COVID-19 Pandemic 
Festa N, Katz-Christy N, Weiss M, Lisk R, Normand SL, Grabowski DC, Newhouse JP, Hsu J. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, May 2023.

Provider Barriers in Uptake of Biosimilars: Case Study on Filgrastim 
Chang J, Karaca-Mandic P, Go R, Schondelmeyer S, Weisdorf D, Jeffery MM. American Journal of Managed Care 29(5), May 2023.

Receipt of Medications for Chronic Disease during the First 2 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic among Enrollees in Fee-for-Service Medicare 
Morden NE, Zhou W, Obermeyer Z, Skinner J. JAMA Network Open 6(5), May 2023, e2313919.

Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cash Transfers on Older Persons Living Alone in India: A Randomized Trial 
McKelway M, Banerjee A, Grela E, Schilbach F, Sequeira M, Sharma G, Vaidyanathan G, Duflo E. Annals of Internal Medicine, May 2023.

Association of Hospital Adoption of Probiotics with Outcomes among Neonates with Very Low Birth Weight 
Agha L, Staiger D, Brown C, Soll RF, Horbar JD, Edwards EM. JAMA Health Forum 4(5), May 2023, e230960.

Longitudinal Patterns in Testosterone Prescribing after US FDA Safety Communication in 2014 
Sankar A, Everhart A, Jena AB, Jeffery MM, Ross JS, Shah ND, Karaca-Mandic P. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, May 2023.

The Promise and Peril of Claims-Based Dementia Ascertainment in Causal Inference 
Festa N, Moura LMVR, Blacker D, Newhouse JP, Hsu J. BMJ: Evidence-Based Medicine, May 2023.

The Impact of COVID-19 Incidence on Emergency Medical Services Utilization 
Moskatel LS, Slusky DJG. The Journal of Emergency Medicine, April 2023.

The Risk of Losing Health Insurance in the United States Is Large, and Remained So after the Affordable Care Act 
Einav L, Finkelstein A. PNAS 120(18), April 2023.

The Role of Physical and Cognitive/Emotional Functioning in the Associations between Common Health Conditions and Working 
Abrams L, Friedman K, Maestas N. Social Science & Medicine 322, April 2023.

COVID-19 Surveillance Testing and Resident Outcomes in Nursing Homes 
McGarry BE, Gandhi AD, Barnett ML. New England Journal of Medicine 388(12), March 2023, pp. 1101–1110.

Texas Senate Bill 8 Significantly Reduced Travel to Abortion Clinics in Texas 
Andersen MS, Marsicano C, Pineda Torres M, Slusky D. Frontiers in Global Women's Health 4, March 2023.

Long-Term Survival with Sickle Cell Disease: A Nationwide Cohort Study of Medicare and Medicaid Beneficiaries 
Jiao B, Johnson KM, Ramsey SD, Bender MA, Devine B, Basu A. Blood Advances, March 2023.

Association between Regulatory Submission Characteristics and Recalls of Medical Devices Receiving 510(k) Clearance 
Everhart AO, Sen S, Stern AD, Zhu Y, Karaca-Mandic P. JAMA 329(2), January 2023, pp. 144–156.