Clinical Endocrinology News

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Andrew N. Wilner, MD: My guest today is Dr. Jose Merino, editor in chief of the Neurology family of journals and professor of neurology and co-vice chair of education at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Our program today is a follow-up of Dr. Merino’s presentation at the recent American Academy of Neurology meeting in Denver, Colorado. Along with two other panelists, Dr. Merino discussed the role of open-access publication and the dangers of predatory journals. 

Jose G. Merino, MD, MPhil: Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure.
 

Open Access Defined

Dr. Wilner: I remember when publication in neurology was pretty straightforward. It was either the green journal or the blue journal, but things have certainly changed. I think one topic that is not clear to everyone is this concept of open access. Could you define that for us? 

Dr. Merino: Sure. Open access is a mode of publication that fosters more open or accessible science. The idea of open access is that it combines two main elements. One is that the papers that are published become immediately available to anybody with an internet connection anywhere in the world without any restrictions. 

The second important element from open access, which makes it different from other models we can talk about, is the fact that the authors retain the copyright of their work, but they give the journal and readers a license to use, reproduce, and modify the content.

This is different, for example, from instances where we have funder mandates. For example, NIH papers have to become available 6 months after publication, so they’re available to everybody but not immediately. 

Then copyright is retained, in the case of NIH employees, for example, by the government or by the journals themselves. The two elements of open access, I think, are immediate access to the material and the fact that it’s published with a Creative Commons license. 

Dr. Wilner: I remember that when a journal article was published, say, in Neurology, if you didn’t have a subscription to Neurology, you went to the library that hopefully had a subscription.

If they didn’t have it, you would write to the author and say, “Hey, I heard you have this great paper because the abstract was out there. Could you send me a reprint?” Has that whole universe evaporated? 

Dr. Merino: It depends on how the paper is published. For example, in Neurology, some of the research we publish is open access. Basically, if you have an internet connection, you can access the paper.

That’s the case for papers published in our wholly open-access journals in the Neurology family like Neurology Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation, Neurology Genetics, or Neurology Education. 

For other papers that are published in Neurology, not under open access, there is a paywall. For some of them, the paywall comes down after a few months based on funder mandates and so on. As I was mentioning, the NIH-funded papers are available 6 months later. 

In the first 6 months, you may have to go to your library, and if your library has a subscription, you can download it directly. [This is also true for] those that always stay behind the paywall, where you have to have a subscription or your library has to have a subscription.
 

Is Pay to Publish a Red Flag?

Dr. Wilner: I’m a professional writer. With any luck, when I write something, I get paid to write it. There’s been a long tradition in academic medicine that when you submit an article to, say, Neurology, you don’t get paid as an author for the publication. Your reward is the honor of it being published. 

Neurology supports itself in various ways, including advertising and so on. That’s been the contract: free publication for work that merits it, and the journal survives on its own. 

With open access, one of the things that’s happened is that — and I’ve published open access myself — is that I get a notification that I need to pay to have my article that I’ve slaved over published. Explain that, please. 

Dr. Merino: This is the issue with open access. As I mentioned, the paper gets published. You’re giving the journal a license to publish it. You’re retaining the copyright of your work. That means that the journal cannot make money or support itself by just publishing open access because they belong to you. 

Typically, open-access journals are not in print and don’t have much in terms of advertising. The contract is you’re giving me a license to publish it, but it’s your journal, so you’re paying a fee for the journal expenses to basically produce your paper. That’s what’s happening with open access. 

That’s been recognized with many funders, for example, with NIH funding or many of the European funders, they’re including open-access fees as part of their funding for research. Now, of course, this doesn’t help if you’re not a funded researcher or if you’re a fellow who’s doing work and so on. 

Typically, most journals will have waived fees or lower fees for these situations. The reason for the open-access fee is the fact that you’re retaining the copyright. You’re not giving it to the journal who can then use it to generate its revenue for supporting itself, the editorial staff, and so on. 

Dr. Wilner: This idea of charging for publication has created a satellite business of what are called predatory journals. How does one know if the open-access journal that I’m submitting to is really just in the business of wanting my $300 or my $900 to get published? How do I know if that’s a reasonable place to publish? 
 

Predatory Journals

Dr. Merino: That’s a big challenge that has come with this whole idea of open access and the fact that now, many journals are online only, so you’re no longer seeing a physical copy. That has given rise to the predatory journals. 

The predatory journal, by definition, is a journal that claims to be open access. They’ll take your paper and publish it, but they don’t provide all the other services that you would typically expect from the fact that you’re paying an open-access fee. This includes getting appropriate peer review, production of the manuscript, and long-term curation and storage of the manuscript. 

Many predatory journals will take your open-access fee, accept any paper that you submit, regardless of the quality, because they’re charging the fees for that. They don’t send it to real peer review, and then in a few months, the journal disappears so there’s no way for anybody to actually find your paper anymore. 

There are certain checklists. Dr. David Moher at the University of Toronto has produced some work trying to help us identify predatory journals. 

One thing I typically suggest to people who ask me this question is: Have you ever heard of this journal before? Does the journal have a track record? How far back does the story of the journal go? Is it supported by a publisher that you know? Do you know anybody who has published there? Is it something you can easily access?

If in doubt, always ask your friendly medical librarian. There used to be lists that were kept in terms of predatory journals that were being constantly updated, but those had to be shut down. As far as I understand, there were legal issues in terms of how things got on that list. 

I think that overall, if you’ve heard of it, if it’s relevant, if it’s known in your field, and if your librarian knows it, it’s probably a good legitimate open-access journal. There are many very good legitimate open-access journals. 

I mentioned the two that we have in our family, but all the other major journals have their own open-access journal within their family. There are some, like BMC or PLOS, that are completely open-access and legitimate journals. 
 

Impact Factor

Dr. Wilner: What about impact factor? Many journals boast about their impact factor. I’m not sure how to interpret that number. 

Dr. Merino: Impact factor is very interesting. The impact factor was developed by medical librarians to try to identify the journals they should be subscribing to. It’s a measure of the average citations to an average paper in the journal. 

It doesn’t tell you about specific papers. It tells you, on average, how many of the papers in this journal get cited so many times. It’s calculated by the number of articles that were cited divided by the number of articles that were published. Journals that publish many papers, like Neurology, have a hard time bringing up their impact factor beyond a certain level. 

Similarly, very small journals with one or two very highly cited papers have a very high impact factor. It’s being used as a measure, perhaps inappropriately, of how good or how reputable a journal is. We all say we don’t care about journal impact factors, but we all know our journal impact factor and we used to know it to three decimals. Now, they changed the system, and there’s only one decimal point, which makes more sense. 

This is more important, for example, for authors when deciding where to submit papers. I know that in some countries, particularly in Europe, the impact factor of the journal where you publish has an impact on your promotion decisions. 

I would say what’s even more important than the impact factor, is to say, “Well, is this the journal that fits the scope of my paper? Is this the journal that reaches the audience that I want to reach when I write my paper?” 

There are some papers, for example, that are very influential. The impact factor just captures citations. There are some papers that are very influential that may not get cited very often. There may be papers that change clinical practice. 

If you read a paper that tells you that you should be changing how you treat your patients with myasthenia based on this paper, that may not get cited. It’s a very clinically focused paper, but it’s probably more impactful than one that gets cited very much in some respect, or they make it to public policy decisions, and so on. 

I think it’s important to look more at the audience and the journal scope when you submit your papers. 

Dr. Wilner: One other technical question. The journals also say they’re indexed in PubMed or Google Scholar. If I want to publish my paper and I want it indexed where the right people are going to find it, where does it need to be indexed? 

Dr. Merino: I grew up using Index Medicus, MedlinePlus, and the Library of Science. I still do. If I need to find something, I go to PubMed. Ideally, papers are listed in MedlinePlus or can be found in PubMed. They’re not the same thing, but you can find them through them. 

That would be an important thing. Nowadays, a lot more people are using Google Scholar or Google just to identify papers. It may be a little bit less relevant, but it’s still a measure of the quality of the journal before they get indexed in some of these. For example, if you get listed in MedlinePlus, it has gone through certain quality checks by the index itself to see whether they would accept the journal or not. That’s something you want to check.

Typically, most of the large journals or the journals you and I know about are listed in more than one place, right? They’re listed in Scopus and Web of Science. They’re listed in MedlinePlus and so on. Again, if you’re submitting your paper, go somewhere where you know the journal and you’ve heard about it. 

Dr. Wilner: I’m not going to ask you about artificial intelligence. We can do that another time. I want to ask something closer to me, which is this question of publish or perish. 

There seems to be, in academics, more emphasis on the number of papers that one has published rather than their quality. How does a younger academician or one who really needs to publish cope with that? 

Dr. Merino: Many people are writing up research that may not be relevant or that may not be high quality just because you need to have a long list of papers to get promoted, for example, if you’re an academician. 

Doug Altman, who was a very influential person in the field quality of not only medical statistics but also medical publishing, had the idea that we need less research, but we need better research. 

We often receive papers where you say, well, what’s the rationale behind the question in this paper? It’s like they had a large amount of data and were trying to squeeze as much as they could out of that. I think, as a young academician, the important thing to think about is whether it is an important question that matters to you and to the field, from whatever perspective, whether it’s going to advance research, advance clinical care, or have public policy implications. 

Is this one where the answer will be important no matter what the answer is? If you’re thinking of that, your work will be well recognized, people will know you, and you’ll get invited to collaborate. I think that’s the most important thing rather than just churning out a large number of papers. 

The productivity will come from the fact that you start by saying, let me ask something that’s really meaningful to me and to the field, with a good question and using strong research methodology. 

Dr. Wilner: Thanks for that, Dr. Merino. I think that’s very valuable for all of us. This has been a great discussion. Do you have any final comments before we wrap up? 

Dr. Merino: I want to encourage people to continue reading medical journals all the time and submitting to us, again, good research and important questions with robust methodology. That’s what we’re looking for in Neurology and most serious medical journals.
 

Dr. Wilner is an associate professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. Dr. Merino is a professor in the department of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Dr. Wilner reported conflicts of interest with Accordant Health Services and Lulu Publishing. Dr. Merino reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Andrew N. Wilner, MD: My guest today is Dr. Jose Merino, editor in chief of the Neurology family of journals and professor of neurology and co-vice chair of education at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Our program today is a follow-up of Dr. Merino’s presentation at the recent American Academy of Neurology meeting in Denver, Colorado. Along with two other panelists, Dr. Merino discussed the role of open-access publication and the dangers of predatory journals. 

Jose G. Merino, MD, MPhil: Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure.
 

Open Access Defined

Dr. Wilner: I remember when publication in neurology was pretty straightforward. It was either the green journal or the blue journal, but things have certainly changed. I think one topic that is not clear to everyone is this concept of open access. Could you define that for us? 

Dr. Merino: Sure. Open access is a mode of publication that fosters more open or accessible science. The idea of open access is that it combines two main elements. One is that the papers that are published become immediately available to anybody with an internet connection anywhere in the world without any restrictions. 

The second important element from open access, which makes it different from other models we can talk about, is the fact that the authors retain the copyright of their work, but they give the journal and readers a license to use, reproduce, and modify the content.

This is different, for example, from instances where we have funder mandates. For example, NIH papers have to become available 6 months after publication, so they’re available to everybody but not immediately. 

Then copyright is retained, in the case of NIH employees, for example, by the government or by the journals themselves. The two elements of open access, I think, are immediate access to the material and the fact that it’s published with a Creative Commons license. 

Dr. Wilner: I remember that when a journal article was published, say, in Neurology, if you didn’t have a subscription to Neurology, you went to the library that hopefully had a subscription.

If they didn’t have it, you would write to the author and say, “Hey, I heard you have this great paper because the abstract was out there. Could you send me a reprint?” Has that whole universe evaporated? 

Dr. Merino: It depends on how the paper is published. For example, in Neurology, some of the research we publish is open access. Basically, if you have an internet connection, you can access the paper.

That’s the case for papers published in our wholly open-access journals in the Neurology family like Neurology Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation, Neurology Genetics, or Neurology Education. 

For other papers that are published in Neurology, not under open access, there is a paywall. For some of them, the paywall comes down after a few months based on funder mandates and so on. As I was mentioning, the NIH-funded papers are available 6 months later. 

In the first 6 months, you may have to go to your library, and if your library has a subscription, you can download it directly. [This is also true for] those that always stay behind the paywall, where you have to have a subscription or your library has to have a subscription.
 

Is Pay to Publish a Red Flag?

Dr. Wilner: I’m a professional writer. With any luck, when I write something, I get paid to write it. There’s been a long tradition in academic medicine that when you submit an article to, say, Neurology, you don’t get paid as an author for the publication. Your reward is the honor of it being published. 

Neurology supports itself in various ways, including advertising and so on. That’s been the contract: free publication for work that merits it, and the journal survives on its own. 

With open access, one of the things that’s happened is that — and I’ve published open access myself — is that I get a notification that I need to pay to have my article that I’ve slaved over published. Explain that, please. 

Dr. Merino: This is the issue with open access. As I mentioned, the paper gets published. You’re giving the journal a license to publish it. You’re retaining the copyright of your work. That means that the journal cannot make money or support itself by just publishing open access because they belong to you. 

Typically, open-access journals are not in print and don’t have much in terms of advertising. The contract is you’re giving me a license to publish it, but it’s your journal, so you’re paying a fee for the journal expenses to basically produce your paper. That’s what’s happening with open access. 

That’s been recognized with many funders, for example, with NIH funding or many of the European funders, they’re including open-access fees as part of their funding for research. Now, of course, this doesn’t help if you’re not a funded researcher or if you’re a fellow who’s doing work and so on. 

Typically, most journals will have waived fees or lower fees for these situations. The reason for the open-access fee is the fact that you’re retaining the copyright. You’re not giving it to the journal who can then use it to generate its revenue for supporting itself, the editorial staff, and so on. 

Dr. Wilner: This idea of charging for publication has created a satellite business of what are called predatory journals. How does one know if the open-access journal that I’m submitting to is really just in the business of wanting my $300 or my $900 to get published? How do I know if that’s a reasonable place to publish? 
 

Predatory Journals

Dr. Merino: That’s a big challenge that has come with this whole idea of open access and the fact that now, many journals are online only, so you’re no longer seeing a physical copy. That has given rise to the predatory journals. 

The predatory journal, by definition, is a journal that claims to be open access. They’ll take your paper and publish it, but they don’t provide all the other services that you would typically expect from the fact that you’re paying an open-access fee. This includes getting appropriate peer review, production of the manuscript, and long-term curation and storage of the manuscript. 

Many predatory journals will take your open-access fee, accept any paper that you submit, regardless of the quality, because they’re charging the fees for that. They don’t send it to real peer review, and then in a few months, the journal disappears so there’s no way for anybody to actually find your paper anymore. 

There are certain checklists. Dr. David Moher at the University of Toronto has produced some work trying to help us identify predatory journals. 

One thing I typically suggest to people who ask me this question is: Have you ever heard of this journal before? Does the journal have a track record? How far back does the story of the journal go? Is it supported by a publisher that you know? Do you know anybody who has published there? Is it something you can easily access?

If in doubt, always ask your friendly medical librarian. There used to be lists that were kept in terms of predatory journals that were being constantly updated, but those had to be shut down. As far as I understand, there were legal issues in terms of how things got on that list. 

I think that overall, if you’ve heard of it, if it’s relevant, if it’s known in your field, and if your librarian knows it, it’s probably a good legitimate open-access journal. There are many very good legitimate open-access journals. 

I mentioned the two that we have in our family, but all the other major journals have their own open-access journal within their family. There are some, like BMC or PLOS, that are completely open-access and legitimate journals. 
 

Impact Factor

Dr. Wilner: What about impact factor? Many journals boast about their impact factor. I’m not sure how to interpret that number. 

Dr. Merino: Impact factor is very interesting. The impact factor was developed by medical librarians to try to identify the journals they should be subscribing to. It’s a measure of the average citations to an average paper in the journal. 

It doesn’t tell you about specific papers. It tells you, on average, how many of the papers in this journal get cited so many times. It’s calculated by the number of articles that were cited divided by the number of articles that were published. Journals that publish many papers, like Neurology, have a hard time bringing up their impact factor beyond a certain level. 

Similarly, very small journals with one or two very highly cited papers have a very high impact factor. It’s being used as a measure, perhaps inappropriately, of how good or how reputable a journal is. We all say we don’t care about journal impact factors, but we all know our journal impact factor and we used to know it to three decimals. Now, they changed the system, and there’s only one decimal point, which makes more sense. 

This is more important, for example, for authors when deciding where to submit papers. I know that in some countries, particularly in Europe, the impact factor of the journal where you publish has an impact on your promotion decisions. 

I would say what’s even more important than the impact factor, is to say, “Well, is this the journal that fits the scope of my paper? Is this the journal that reaches the audience that I want to reach when I write my paper?” 

There are some papers, for example, that are very influential. The impact factor just captures citations. There are some papers that are very influential that may not get cited very often. There may be papers that change clinical practice. 

If you read a paper that tells you that you should be changing how you treat your patients with myasthenia based on this paper, that may not get cited. It’s a very clinically focused paper, but it’s probably more impactful than one that gets cited very much in some respect, or they make it to public policy decisions, and so on. 

I think it’s important to look more at the audience and the journal scope when you submit your papers. 

Dr. Wilner: One other technical question. The journals also say they’re indexed in PubMed or Google Scholar. If I want to publish my paper and I want it indexed where the right people are going to find it, where does it need to be indexed? 

Dr. Merino: I grew up using Index Medicus, MedlinePlus, and the Library of Science. I still do. If I need to find something, I go to PubMed. Ideally, papers are listed in MedlinePlus or can be found in PubMed. They’re not the same thing, but you can find them through them. 

That would be an important thing. Nowadays, a lot more people are using Google Scholar or Google just to identify papers. It may be a little bit less relevant, but it’s still a measure of the quality of the journal before they get indexed in some of these. For example, if you get listed in MedlinePlus, it has gone through certain quality checks by the index itself to see whether they would accept the journal or not. That’s something you want to check.

Typically, most of the large journals or the journals you and I know about are listed in more than one place, right? They’re listed in Scopus and Web of Science. They’re listed in MedlinePlus and so on. Again, if you’re submitting your paper, go somewhere where you know the journal and you’ve heard about it. 

Dr. Wilner: I’m not going to ask you about artificial intelligence. We can do that another time. I want to ask something closer to me, which is this question of publish or perish. 

There seems to be, in academics, more emphasis on the number of papers that one has published rather than their quality. How does a younger academician or one who really needs to publish cope with that? 

Dr. Merino: Many people are writing up research that may not be relevant or that may not be high quality just because you need to have a long list of papers to get promoted, for example, if you’re an academician. 

Doug Altman, who was a very influential person in the field quality of not only medical statistics but also medical publishing, had the idea that we need less research, but we need better research. 

We often receive papers where you say, well, what’s the rationale behind the question in this paper? It’s like they had a large amount of data and were trying to squeeze as much as they could out of that. I think, as a young academician, the important thing to think about is whether it is an important question that matters to you and to the field, from whatever perspective, whether it’s going to advance research, advance clinical care, or have public policy implications. 

Is this one where the answer will be important no matter what the answer is? If you’re thinking of that, your work will be well recognized, people will know you, and you’ll get invited to collaborate. I think that’s the most important thing rather than just churning out a large number of papers. 

The productivity will come from the fact that you start by saying, let me ask something that’s really meaningful to me and to the field, with a good question and using strong research methodology. 

Dr. Wilner: Thanks for that, Dr. Merino. I think that’s very valuable for all of us. This has been a great discussion. Do you have any final comments before we wrap up? 

Dr. Merino: I want to encourage people to continue reading medical journals all the time and submitting to us, again, good research and important questions with robust methodology. That’s what we’re looking for in Neurology and most serious medical journals.
 

Dr. Wilner is an associate professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. Dr. Merino is a professor in the department of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Dr. Wilner reported conflicts of interest with Accordant Health Services and Lulu Publishing. Dr. Merino reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Andrew N. Wilner, MD: My guest today is Dr. Jose Merino, editor in chief of the Neurology family of journals and professor of neurology and co-vice chair of education at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Our program today is a follow-up of Dr. Merino’s presentation at the recent American Academy of Neurology meeting in Denver, Colorado. Along with two other panelists, Dr. Merino discussed the role of open-access publication and the dangers of predatory journals. 

Jose G. Merino, MD, MPhil: Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure.
 

Open Access Defined

Dr. Wilner: I remember when publication in neurology was pretty straightforward. It was either the green journal or the blue journal, but things have certainly changed. I think one topic that is not clear to everyone is this concept of open access. Could you define that for us? 

Dr. Merino: Sure. Open access is a mode of publication that fosters more open or accessible science. The idea of open access is that it combines two main elements. One is that the papers that are published become immediately available to anybody with an internet connection anywhere in the world without any restrictions. 

The second important element from open access, which makes it different from other models we can talk about, is the fact that the authors retain the copyright of their work, but they give the journal and readers a license to use, reproduce, and modify the content.

This is different, for example, from instances where we have funder mandates. For example, NIH papers have to become available 6 months after publication, so they’re available to everybody but not immediately. 

Then copyright is retained, in the case of NIH employees, for example, by the government or by the journals themselves. The two elements of open access, I think, are immediate access to the material and the fact that it’s published with a Creative Commons license. 

Dr. Wilner: I remember that when a journal article was published, say, in Neurology, if you didn’t have a subscription to Neurology, you went to the library that hopefully had a subscription.

If they didn’t have it, you would write to the author and say, “Hey, I heard you have this great paper because the abstract was out there. Could you send me a reprint?” Has that whole universe evaporated? 

Dr. Merino: It depends on how the paper is published. For example, in Neurology, some of the research we publish is open access. Basically, if you have an internet connection, you can access the paper.

That’s the case for papers published in our wholly open-access journals in the Neurology family like Neurology Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation, Neurology Genetics, or Neurology Education. 

For other papers that are published in Neurology, not under open access, there is a paywall. For some of them, the paywall comes down after a few months based on funder mandates and so on. As I was mentioning, the NIH-funded papers are available 6 months later. 

In the first 6 months, you may have to go to your library, and if your library has a subscription, you can download it directly. [This is also true for] those that always stay behind the paywall, where you have to have a subscription or your library has to have a subscription.
 

Is Pay to Publish a Red Flag?

Dr. Wilner: I’m a professional writer. With any luck, when I write something, I get paid to write it. There’s been a long tradition in academic medicine that when you submit an article to, say, Neurology, you don’t get paid as an author for the publication. Your reward is the honor of it being published. 

Neurology supports itself in various ways, including advertising and so on. That’s been the contract: free publication for work that merits it, and the journal survives on its own. 

With open access, one of the things that’s happened is that — and I’ve published open access myself — is that I get a notification that I need to pay to have my article that I’ve slaved over published. Explain that, please. 

Dr. Merino: This is the issue with open access. As I mentioned, the paper gets published. You’re giving the journal a license to publish it. You’re retaining the copyright of your work. That means that the journal cannot make money or support itself by just publishing open access because they belong to you. 

Typically, open-access journals are not in print and don’t have much in terms of advertising. The contract is you’re giving me a license to publish it, but it’s your journal, so you’re paying a fee for the journal expenses to basically produce your paper. That’s what’s happening with open access. 

That’s been recognized with many funders, for example, with NIH funding or many of the European funders, they’re including open-access fees as part of their funding for research. Now, of course, this doesn’t help if you’re not a funded researcher or if you’re a fellow who’s doing work and so on. 

Typically, most journals will have waived fees or lower fees for these situations. The reason for the open-access fee is the fact that you’re retaining the copyright. You’re not giving it to the journal who can then use it to generate its revenue for supporting itself, the editorial staff, and so on. 

Dr. Wilner: This idea of charging for publication has created a satellite business of what are called predatory journals. How does one know if the open-access journal that I’m submitting to is really just in the business of wanting my $300 or my $900 to get published? How do I know if that’s a reasonable place to publish? 
 

Predatory Journals

Dr. Merino: That’s a big challenge that has come with this whole idea of open access and the fact that now, many journals are online only, so you’re no longer seeing a physical copy. That has given rise to the predatory journals. 

The predatory journal, by definition, is a journal that claims to be open access. They’ll take your paper and publish it, but they don’t provide all the other services that you would typically expect from the fact that you’re paying an open-access fee. This includes getting appropriate peer review, production of the manuscript, and long-term curation and storage of the manuscript. 

Many predatory journals will take your open-access fee, accept any paper that you submit, regardless of the quality, because they’re charging the fees for that. They don’t send it to real peer review, and then in a few months, the journal disappears so there’s no way for anybody to actually find your paper anymore. 

There are certain checklists. Dr. David Moher at the University of Toronto has produced some work trying to help us identify predatory journals. 

One thing I typically suggest to people who ask me this question is: Have you ever heard of this journal before? Does the journal have a track record? How far back does the story of the journal go? Is it supported by a publisher that you know? Do you know anybody who has published there? Is it something you can easily access?

If in doubt, always ask your friendly medical librarian. There used to be lists that were kept in terms of predatory journals that were being constantly updated, but those had to be shut down. As far as I understand, there were legal issues in terms of how things got on that list. 

I think that overall, if you’ve heard of it, if it’s relevant, if it’s known in your field, and if your librarian knows it, it’s probably a good legitimate open-access journal. There are many very good legitimate open-access journals. 

I mentioned the two that we have in our family, but all the other major journals have their own open-access journal within their family. There are some, like BMC or PLOS, that are completely open-access and legitimate journals. 
 

Impact Factor

Dr. Wilner: What about impact factor? Many journals boast about their impact factor. I’m not sure how to interpret that number. 

Dr. Merino: Impact factor is very interesting. The impact factor was developed by medical librarians to try to identify the journals they should be subscribing to. It’s a measure of the average citations to an average paper in the journal. 

It doesn’t tell you about specific papers. It tells you, on average, how many of the papers in this journal get cited so many times. It’s calculated by the number of articles that were cited divided by the number of articles that were published. Journals that publish many papers, like Neurology, have a hard time bringing up their impact factor beyond a certain level. 

Similarly, very small journals with one or two very highly cited papers have a very high impact factor. It’s being used as a measure, perhaps inappropriately, of how good or how reputable a journal is. We all say we don’t care about journal impact factors, but we all know our journal impact factor and we used to know it to three decimals. Now, they changed the system, and there’s only one decimal point, which makes more sense. 

This is more important, for example, for authors when deciding where to submit papers. I know that in some countries, particularly in Europe, the impact factor of the journal where you publish has an impact on your promotion decisions. 

I would say what’s even more important than the impact factor, is to say, “Well, is this the journal that fits the scope of my paper? Is this the journal that reaches the audience that I want to reach when I write my paper?” 

There are some papers, for example, that are very influential. The impact factor just captures citations. There are some papers that are very influential that may not get cited very often. There may be papers that change clinical practice. 

If you read a paper that tells you that you should be changing how you treat your patients with myasthenia based on this paper, that may not get cited. It’s a very clinically focused paper, but it’s probably more impactful than one that gets cited very much in some respect, or they make it to public policy decisions, and so on. 

I think it’s important to look more at the audience and the journal scope when you submit your papers. 

Dr. Wilner: One other technical question. The journals also say they’re indexed in PubMed or Google Scholar. If I want to publish my paper and I want it indexed where the right people are going to find it, where does it need to be indexed? 

Dr. Merino: I grew up using Index Medicus, MedlinePlus, and the Library of Science. I still do. If I need to find something, I go to PubMed. Ideally, papers are listed in MedlinePlus or can be found in PubMed. They’re not the same thing, but you can find them through them. 

That would be an important thing. Nowadays, a lot more people are using Google Scholar or Google just to identify papers. It may be a little bit less relevant, but it’s still a measure of the quality of the journal before they get indexed in some of these. For example, if you get listed in MedlinePlus, it has gone through certain quality checks by the index itself to see whether they would accept the journal or not. That’s something you want to check.

Typically, most of the large journals or the journals you and I know about are listed in more than one place, right? They’re listed in Scopus and Web of Science. They’re listed in MedlinePlus and so on. Again, if you’re submitting your paper, go somewhere where you know the journal and you’ve heard about it. 

Dr. Wilner: I’m not going to ask you about artificial intelligence. We can do that another time. I want to ask something closer to me, which is this question of publish or perish. 

There seems to be, in academics, more emphasis on the number of papers that one has published rather than their quality. How does a younger academician or one who really needs to publish cope with that? 

Dr. Merino: Many people are writing up research that may not be relevant or that may not be high quality just because you need to have a long list of papers to get promoted, for example, if you’re an academician. 

Doug Altman, who was a very influential person in the field quality of not only medical statistics but also medical publishing, had the idea that we need less research, but we need better research. 

We often receive papers where you say, well, what’s the rationale behind the question in this paper? It’s like they had a large amount of data and were trying to squeeze as much as they could out of that. I think, as a young academician, the important thing to think about is whether it is an important question that matters to you and to the field, from whatever perspective, whether it’s going to advance research, advance clinical care, or have public policy implications. 

Is this one where the answer will be important no matter what the answer is? If you’re thinking of that, your work will be well recognized, people will know you, and you’ll get invited to collaborate. I think that’s the most important thing rather than just churning out a large number of papers. 

The productivity will come from the fact that you start by saying, let me ask something that’s really meaningful to me and to the field, with a good question and using strong research methodology. 

Dr. Wilner: Thanks for that, Dr. Merino. I think that’s very valuable for all of us. This has been a great discussion. Do you have any final comments before we wrap up? 

Dr. Merino: I want to encourage people to continue reading medical journals all the time and submitting to us, again, good research and important questions with robust methodology. That’s what we’re looking for in Neurology and most serious medical journals.
 

Dr. Wilner is an associate professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. Dr. Merino is a professor in the department of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Dr. Wilner reported conflicts of interest with Accordant Health Services and Lulu Publishing. Dr. Merino reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

When he completed his fellowship at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Moshe Chasky, MD, joined a small five-person practice that rented space from the city’s Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. The arrangement seemed to work well for the hospital and the small practice, which remained independent.

Within 10 years, the hospital sought to buy the practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists.

But the oncologists at Alliance did not want to join Jefferson.

The hospital eventually entered into an exclusive agreement with its own medical group to provide inpatient oncology/hematology services at three Jefferson Health–Northeast hospitals and stripped Dr. Chasky and his colleagues of their privileges at those facilities, Medscape Medical News reported last year.

The Alliance story is a familiar one for independent community oncology practices, said Jeff Patton, MD, CEO of OneOncology, a management services organization.

A 2020 report from the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), for instance, tracked mergers, acquisitions, and closures in the community oncology setting and found the number of practices acquired by hospitals, known as vertical integration, nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020.

“Some hospitals are pretty predatory in their approach,” Dr. Patton said. If hospitals have their own oncology program, “they’ll employ the referring doctors and then discourage them or prevent them from referring patients to our independent practices that are not owned by the hospital.”

Still, in the face of growing pressure to join hospitals, some community oncology practices are finding ways to survive and maintain their independence.
 

A Growing Trend

The latest data continue to show a clear trend: Consolidation in oncology is on the rise.

A 2024 study revealed that the pace of consolidation seems to be increasing.

The analysis found that, between 2015 and 2022, the number of medical oncologists increased by 14% and the number of medical oncologists per practice increased by 40%, while the number of practices decreased by 18%.

While about 44% of practices remain independent, the percentage of medical oncologists working in practices with more than 25 clinicians has increased from 34% in 2015 to 44% in 2022. By 2022, the largest 102 practices in the United States employed more than 40% of all medical oncologists.

“The rate of consolidation seems to be rapid,” study coauthor Parsa Erfani, MD, an internal medicine resident at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, explained.

Consolidation appears to breed more consolidation. The researchers found, for instance, that markets with greater hospital consolidation and more hospital beds per capita were more likely to undergo consolidation in oncology.

Consolidation may be higher in these markets “because hospitals or health systems are buying up oncology practices or conversely because oncology practices are merging to compete more effectively with larger hospitals in the area,” Dr. Erfani told this news organization.

Mergers among independent practices, known as horizontal integration, have also been on the rise, according to the 2020 COA report. These mergers can help counter pressures from hospitals seeking to acquire community practices as well as prevent practices and their clinics from closing.

Although Dr. Erfani’s research wasn’t designed to determine the factors behind consolidation, he and his colleagues point to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program as potential drivers of this trend.

The ACA encouraged consolidation as a way to improve efficiency and created the need for ever-larger information systems to collect and report quality data. But these data collection and reporting requirements have become increasingly difficult for smaller practices to take on.

The 340B Program, however, may be a bigger contributing factor to consolidation. Created in 1992, the 340B Program allows qualifying hospitals and clinics that treat low-income and uninsured patients to buy outpatient prescription drugs at a 25%-50% discount.

Hospitals seeking to capitalize on the margins possible under the 340B Program will “buy all the referring physicians in a market so that the medical oncology group is left with little choice but to sell to the hospital,” said Dr. Patton.

“Those 340B dollars are worth a lot to hospitals,” said David A. Eagle, MD, a hematologist/oncologist with New York Cancer & Blood Specialists and past president of COA. The program “creates an appetite for nonprofit hospitals to want to grow their medical oncology programs,” he told this news organization.

Declining Medicare reimbursement has also hit independent practices hard.

Over the past 15 years, compared with inflation, physicians have gotten “a pay rate decrease from Medicare,” said Dr. Patton. Payers have followed that lead and tried to cut pay for clinicians, especially those who do not have market share, he said. Paying them less is “disingenuous knowing that our costs of providing care are going up,” he said.
 

Less Access, Higher Costs, Worse Care?

Many studies have demonstrated that, when hospitals become behemoths in a given market, healthcare costs go up.

“There are robust data showing that consolidation increases healthcare costs by reducing competition, including in oncology,” wrote Dr. Erfani and colleagues.

Oncology practices that are owned by hospitals bill facility fees for outpatient chemotherapy treatment, adding another layer of cost, the researchers explained, citing a 2019 Health Economics study.

Another analysis, published in 2020, found that hospital prices for the top 37 infused cancer drugs averaged 86% more per unit than the price charged by physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments charged even more, on average, for drugs — 128% more for nivolumab and 428% more for fluorouracil, for instance.

In their 2024 analysis, Dr. Erfani and colleagues also found that increased hospital market concentration was associated with worse quality of care, across all assessed patient satisfaction measures, and may result in worse access to care as well.

Overall, these consolidation “trends have important implications for cancer care cost, quality, and access,” the authors concluded.
 

Navigating the Consolidation Trend

In the face of mounting pressure to join hospitals, community oncology practices have typically relied on horizontal mergers to maintain their independence. An increasing number of practices, however, are now turning to another strategy: Management services organizations.

According to some oncologists, a core benefit of joining a management services organization is their community practices can maintain autonomy, hold on to referrals, and benefit from access to a wider network of peers and recently approved treatments such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies.

In these arrangements, the management company also provides business assistance to practices, including help with billing and collection, payer negotiations, supply chain issues, and credentialing, as well as recruiting, hiring, and marketing.

These management organizations, which include American Oncology Network, Integrated Oncology Network, OneOncology, and Verdi Oncology, are, however, backed by private equity. According to a 2022 report, private equity–backed management organizations have ramped up arrangements with community oncology practices over the past few years — a trend that has concerned some experts.

The authors of a recent analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine explained that, although private equity involvement in physician practices may enable operational efficiencies, “critics point to potential conflicts of interest” and highlight concerns that patients “may face additional barriers to both accessibility and affordability of care.”

The difference, according to some oncologists, is their practices are not owned by the management services organization; instead, the practices enter contracts that outline the boundaries of the relationship and stipulate fees to the management organizations.

In 2020, Dr. Chasky’s practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists, joined The US Oncology Network, a management services organization wholly owned by McKesson. The organization provides the practice with capital and other resources, as well as access to the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, so patients can participate in clinical trials.

“We totally function as an independent practice,” said Dr. Chasky. “We make our own management decisions,” he said. For instance, if Alliance wants to hire a new clinician, US Oncology helps with the recruitment. “But at the end of the day, it’s our practice,” he said.

Davey Daniel, MD — whose community practice joined the management services organization OneOncology — has seen the benefits of being part of a larger network. For instance, bispecific therapies for leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma are typically administered at academic centers because of the risk for cytokine release syndrome.

However, physician leaders in the OneOncology network “came up with a playbook on how to do it safely” in the community setting, said Dr. Daniel. “It meant that we were adopting FDA newly approved therapies in a very short course.”

Being able to draw from a wider pool of expertise has had other advantages. Dr. Daniel can lean on pathologists and research scientists in the network for advice on targeted therapy use. “We’re actually bringing precision medicine expertise to the community,” Dr. Daniel said.

Dr. Chasky and Dr. Eagle, whose practice is also part of OneOncology, said that continuing to work in the community setting has allowed them greater flexibility.

Dr. Eagle explained that New York Cancer & Blood Specialists tries to offer patients an appointment within 2 days of a referral, and it allows walk-in visits.

Dr. Chasky leans into the flexibility by having staff stay late, when needed, to ensure that all patients are seen. “We’re there for our patients at all hours,” Dr. Chasky said, adding that often “you don’t have that flexibility when you work for a big hospital system.”

The bottom line is community oncology can still thrive, said Nick Ferreyros, managing director of COA, “as long as we have a healthy competitive ecosystem where [we] are valued and seen as an important part of our cancer care system.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

When he completed his fellowship at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Moshe Chasky, MD, joined a small five-person practice that rented space from the city’s Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. The arrangement seemed to work well for the hospital and the small practice, which remained independent.

Within 10 years, the hospital sought to buy the practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists.

But the oncologists at Alliance did not want to join Jefferson.

The hospital eventually entered into an exclusive agreement with its own medical group to provide inpatient oncology/hematology services at three Jefferson Health–Northeast hospitals and stripped Dr. Chasky and his colleagues of their privileges at those facilities, Medscape Medical News reported last year.

The Alliance story is a familiar one for independent community oncology practices, said Jeff Patton, MD, CEO of OneOncology, a management services organization.

A 2020 report from the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), for instance, tracked mergers, acquisitions, and closures in the community oncology setting and found the number of practices acquired by hospitals, known as vertical integration, nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020.

“Some hospitals are pretty predatory in their approach,” Dr. Patton said. If hospitals have their own oncology program, “they’ll employ the referring doctors and then discourage them or prevent them from referring patients to our independent practices that are not owned by the hospital.”

Still, in the face of growing pressure to join hospitals, some community oncology practices are finding ways to survive and maintain their independence.
 

A Growing Trend

The latest data continue to show a clear trend: Consolidation in oncology is on the rise.

A 2024 study revealed that the pace of consolidation seems to be increasing.

The analysis found that, between 2015 and 2022, the number of medical oncologists increased by 14% and the number of medical oncologists per practice increased by 40%, while the number of practices decreased by 18%.

While about 44% of practices remain independent, the percentage of medical oncologists working in practices with more than 25 clinicians has increased from 34% in 2015 to 44% in 2022. By 2022, the largest 102 practices in the United States employed more than 40% of all medical oncologists.

“The rate of consolidation seems to be rapid,” study coauthor Parsa Erfani, MD, an internal medicine resident at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, explained.

Consolidation appears to breed more consolidation. The researchers found, for instance, that markets with greater hospital consolidation and more hospital beds per capita were more likely to undergo consolidation in oncology.

Consolidation may be higher in these markets “because hospitals or health systems are buying up oncology practices or conversely because oncology practices are merging to compete more effectively with larger hospitals in the area,” Dr. Erfani told this news organization.

Mergers among independent practices, known as horizontal integration, have also been on the rise, according to the 2020 COA report. These mergers can help counter pressures from hospitals seeking to acquire community practices as well as prevent practices and their clinics from closing.

Although Dr. Erfani’s research wasn’t designed to determine the factors behind consolidation, he and his colleagues point to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program as potential drivers of this trend.

The ACA encouraged consolidation as a way to improve efficiency and created the need for ever-larger information systems to collect and report quality data. But these data collection and reporting requirements have become increasingly difficult for smaller practices to take on.

The 340B Program, however, may be a bigger contributing factor to consolidation. Created in 1992, the 340B Program allows qualifying hospitals and clinics that treat low-income and uninsured patients to buy outpatient prescription drugs at a 25%-50% discount.

Hospitals seeking to capitalize on the margins possible under the 340B Program will “buy all the referring physicians in a market so that the medical oncology group is left with little choice but to sell to the hospital,” said Dr. Patton.

“Those 340B dollars are worth a lot to hospitals,” said David A. Eagle, MD, a hematologist/oncologist with New York Cancer & Blood Specialists and past president of COA. The program “creates an appetite for nonprofit hospitals to want to grow their medical oncology programs,” he told this news organization.

Declining Medicare reimbursement has also hit independent practices hard.

Over the past 15 years, compared with inflation, physicians have gotten “a pay rate decrease from Medicare,” said Dr. Patton. Payers have followed that lead and tried to cut pay for clinicians, especially those who do not have market share, he said. Paying them less is “disingenuous knowing that our costs of providing care are going up,” he said.
 

Less Access, Higher Costs, Worse Care?

Many studies have demonstrated that, when hospitals become behemoths in a given market, healthcare costs go up.

“There are robust data showing that consolidation increases healthcare costs by reducing competition, including in oncology,” wrote Dr. Erfani and colleagues.

Oncology practices that are owned by hospitals bill facility fees for outpatient chemotherapy treatment, adding another layer of cost, the researchers explained, citing a 2019 Health Economics study.

Another analysis, published in 2020, found that hospital prices for the top 37 infused cancer drugs averaged 86% more per unit than the price charged by physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments charged even more, on average, for drugs — 128% more for nivolumab and 428% more for fluorouracil, for instance.

In their 2024 analysis, Dr. Erfani and colleagues also found that increased hospital market concentration was associated with worse quality of care, across all assessed patient satisfaction measures, and may result in worse access to care as well.

Overall, these consolidation “trends have important implications for cancer care cost, quality, and access,” the authors concluded.
 

Navigating the Consolidation Trend

In the face of mounting pressure to join hospitals, community oncology practices have typically relied on horizontal mergers to maintain their independence. An increasing number of practices, however, are now turning to another strategy: Management services organizations.

According to some oncologists, a core benefit of joining a management services organization is their community practices can maintain autonomy, hold on to referrals, and benefit from access to a wider network of peers and recently approved treatments such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies.

In these arrangements, the management company also provides business assistance to practices, including help with billing and collection, payer negotiations, supply chain issues, and credentialing, as well as recruiting, hiring, and marketing.

These management organizations, which include American Oncology Network, Integrated Oncology Network, OneOncology, and Verdi Oncology, are, however, backed by private equity. According to a 2022 report, private equity–backed management organizations have ramped up arrangements with community oncology practices over the past few years — a trend that has concerned some experts.

The authors of a recent analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine explained that, although private equity involvement in physician practices may enable operational efficiencies, “critics point to potential conflicts of interest” and highlight concerns that patients “may face additional barriers to both accessibility and affordability of care.”

The difference, according to some oncologists, is their practices are not owned by the management services organization; instead, the practices enter contracts that outline the boundaries of the relationship and stipulate fees to the management organizations.

In 2020, Dr. Chasky’s practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists, joined The US Oncology Network, a management services organization wholly owned by McKesson. The organization provides the practice with capital and other resources, as well as access to the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, so patients can participate in clinical trials.

“We totally function as an independent practice,” said Dr. Chasky. “We make our own management decisions,” he said. For instance, if Alliance wants to hire a new clinician, US Oncology helps with the recruitment. “But at the end of the day, it’s our practice,” he said.

Davey Daniel, MD — whose community practice joined the management services organization OneOncology — has seen the benefits of being part of a larger network. For instance, bispecific therapies for leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma are typically administered at academic centers because of the risk for cytokine release syndrome.

However, physician leaders in the OneOncology network “came up with a playbook on how to do it safely” in the community setting, said Dr. Daniel. “It meant that we were adopting FDA newly approved therapies in a very short course.”

Being able to draw from a wider pool of expertise has had other advantages. Dr. Daniel can lean on pathologists and research scientists in the network for advice on targeted therapy use. “We’re actually bringing precision medicine expertise to the community,” Dr. Daniel said.

Dr. Chasky and Dr. Eagle, whose practice is also part of OneOncology, said that continuing to work in the community setting has allowed them greater flexibility.

Dr. Eagle explained that New York Cancer & Blood Specialists tries to offer patients an appointment within 2 days of a referral, and it allows walk-in visits.

Dr. Chasky leans into the flexibility by having staff stay late, when needed, to ensure that all patients are seen. “We’re there for our patients at all hours,” Dr. Chasky said, adding that often “you don’t have that flexibility when you work for a big hospital system.”

The bottom line is community oncology can still thrive, said Nick Ferreyros, managing director of COA, “as long as we have a healthy competitive ecosystem where [we] are valued and seen as an important part of our cancer care system.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

When he completed his fellowship at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Moshe Chasky, MD, joined a small five-person practice that rented space from the city’s Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. The arrangement seemed to work well for the hospital and the small practice, which remained independent.

Within 10 years, the hospital sought to buy the practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists.

But the oncologists at Alliance did not want to join Jefferson.

The hospital eventually entered into an exclusive agreement with its own medical group to provide inpatient oncology/hematology services at three Jefferson Health–Northeast hospitals and stripped Dr. Chasky and his colleagues of their privileges at those facilities, Medscape Medical News reported last year.

The Alliance story is a familiar one for independent community oncology practices, said Jeff Patton, MD, CEO of OneOncology, a management services organization.

A 2020 report from the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), for instance, tracked mergers, acquisitions, and closures in the community oncology setting and found the number of practices acquired by hospitals, known as vertical integration, nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020.

“Some hospitals are pretty predatory in their approach,” Dr. Patton said. If hospitals have their own oncology program, “they’ll employ the referring doctors and then discourage them or prevent them from referring patients to our independent practices that are not owned by the hospital.”

Still, in the face of growing pressure to join hospitals, some community oncology practices are finding ways to survive and maintain their independence.
 

A Growing Trend

The latest data continue to show a clear trend: Consolidation in oncology is on the rise.

A 2024 study revealed that the pace of consolidation seems to be increasing.

The analysis found that, between 2015 and 2022, the number of medical oncologists increased by 14% and the number of medical oncologists per practice increased by 40%, while the number of practices decreased by 18%.

While about 44% of practices remain independent, the percentage of medical oncologists working in practices with more than 25 clinicians has increased from 34% in 2015 to 44% in 2022. By 2022, the largest 102 practices in the United States employed more than 40% of all medical oncologists.

“The rate of consolidation seems to be rapid,” study coauthor Parsa Erfani, MD, an internal medicine resident at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, explained.

Consolidation appears to breed more consolidation. The researchers found, for instance, that markets with greater hospital consolidation and more hospital beds per capita were more likely to undergo consolidation in oncology.

Consolidation may be higher in these markets “because hospitals or health systems are buying up oncology practices or conversely because oncology practices are merging to compete more effectively with larger hospitals in the area,” Dr. Erfani told this news organization.

Mergers among independent practices, known as horizontal integration, have also been on the rise, according to the 2020 COA report. These mergers can help counter pressures from hospitals seeking to acquire community practices as well as prevent practices and their clinics from closing.

Although Dr. Erfani’s research wasn’t designed to determine the factors behind consolidation, he and his colleagues point to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program as potential drivers of this trend.

The ACA encouraged consolidation as a way to improve efficiency and created the need for ever-larger information systems to collect and report quality data. But these data collection and reporting requirements have become increasingly difficult for smaller practices to take on.

The 340B Program, however, may be a bigger contributing factor to consolidation. Created in 1992, the 340B Program allows qualifying hospitals and clinics that treat low-income and uninsured patients to buy outpatient prescription drugs at a 25%-50% discount.

Hospitals seeking to capitalize on the margins possible under the 340B Program will “buy all the referring physicians in a market so that the medical oncology group is left with little choice but to sell to the hospital,” said Dr. Patton.

“Those 340B dollars are worth a lot to hospitals,” said David A. Eagle, MD, a hematologist/oncologist with New York Cancer & Blood Specialists and past president of COA. The program “creates an appetite for nonprofit hospitals to want to grow their medical oncology programs,” he told this news organization.

Declining Medicare reimbursement has also hit independent practices hard.

Over the past 15 years, compared with inflation, physicians have gotten “a pay rate decrease from Medicare,” said Dr. Patton. Payers have followed that lead and tried to cut pay for clinicians, especially those who do not have market share, he said. Paying them less is “disingenuous knowing that our costs of providing care are going up,” he said.
 

Less Access, Higher Costs, Worse Care?

Many studies have demonstrated that, when hospitals become behemoths in a given market, healthcare costs go up.

“There are robust data showing that consolidation increases healthcare costs by reducing competition, including in oncology,” wrote Dr. Erfani and colleagues.

Oncology practices that are owned by hospitals bill facility fees for outpatient chemotherapy treatment, adding another layer of cost, the researchers explained, citing a 2019 Health Economics study.

Another analysis, published in 2020, found that hospital prices for the top 37 infused cancer drugs averaged 86% more per unit than the price charged by physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments charged even more, on average, for drugs — 128% more for nivolumab and 428% more for fluorouracil, for instance.

In their 2024 analysis, Dr. Erfani and colleagues also found that increased hospital market concentration was associated with worse quality of care, across all assessed patient satisfaction measures, and may result in worse access to care as well.

Overall, these consolidation “trends have important implications for cancer care cost, quality, and access,” the authors concluded.
 

Navigating the Consolidation Trend

In the face of mounting pressure to join hospitals, community oncology practices have typically relied on horizontal mergers to maintain their independence. An increasing number of practices, however, are now turning to another strategy: Management services organizations.

According to some oncologists, a core benefit of joining a management services organization is their community practices can maintain autonomy, hold on to referrals, and benefit from access to a wider network of peers and recently approved treatments such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies.

In these arrangements, the management company also provides business assistance to practices, including help with billing and collection, payer negotiations, supply chain issues, and credentialing, as well as recruiting, hiring, and marketing.

These management organizations, which include American Oncology Network, Integrated Oncology Network, OneOncology, and Verdi Oncology, are, however, backed by private equity. According to a 2022 report, private equity–backed management organizations have ramped up arrangements with community oncology practices over the past few years — a trend that has concerned some experts.

The authors of a recent analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine explained that, although private equity involvement in physician practices may enable operational efficiencies, “critics point to potential conflicts of interest” and highlight concerns that patients “may face additional barriers to both accessibility and affordability of care.”

The difference, according to some oncologists, is their practices are not owned by the management services organization; instead, the practices enter contracts that outline the boundaries of the relationship and stipulate fees to the management organizations.

In 2020, Dr. Chasky’s practice, Alliance Cancer Specialists, joined The US Oncology Network, a management services organization wholly owned by McKesson. The organization provides the practice with capital and other resources, as well as access to the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, so patients can participate in clinical trials.

“We totally function as an independent practice,” said Dr. Chasky. “We make our own management decisions,” he said. For instance, if Alliance wants to hire a new clinician, US Oncology helps with the recruitment. “But at the end of the day, it’s our practice,” he said.

Davey Daniel, MD — whose community practice joined the management services organization OneOncology — has seen the benefits of being part of a larger network. For instance, bispecific therapies for leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma are typically administered at academic centers because of the risk for cytokine release syndrome.

However, physician leaders in the OneOncology network “came up with a playbook on how to do it safely” in the community setting, said Dr. Daniel. “It meant that we were adopting FDA newly approved therapies in a very short course.”

Being able to draw from a wider pool of expertise has had other advantages. Dr. Daniel can lean on pathologists and research scientists in the network for advice on targeted therapy use. “We’re actually bringing precision medicine expertise to the community,” Dr. Daniel said.

Dr. Chasky and Dr. Eagle, whose practice is also part of OneOncology, said that continuing to work in the community setting has allowed them greater flexibility.

Dr. Eagle explained that New York Cancer & Blood Specialists tries to offer patients an appointment within 2 days of a referral, and it allows walk-in visits.

Dr. Chasky leans into the flexibility by having staff stay late, when needed, to ensure that all patients are seen. “We’re there for our patients at all hours,” Dr. Chasky said, adding that often “you don’t have that flexibility when you work for a big hospital system.”

The bottom line is community oncology can still thrive, said Nick Ferreyros, managing director of COA, “as long as we have a healthy competitive ecosystem where [we] are valued and seen as an important part of our cancer care system.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

At the recent American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions, researchers unveiled promising data on a novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray. This innovative treatment shows significant promise for managing mild to moderate infected diabetic foot ulcers. 

Of the 1.6 million people with diabetes in the United States and the tens of millions of similar people worldwide, 50% will require antimicrobials at some time during their life cycle. Diabetic foot infections are difficult to treat because of their resistance to conventional therapies, often leading to severe complications, including amputations. 

To address this issue, the antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray was developed with a novel mechanism of action to potentially improve treatment outcomes. The study aimed to assess the clinical efficacy and safety of the PL-5 spray combined with standard debridement procedures in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers.

This multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in four hospitals across China. Participants with mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to either the PL-5 group or the placebo group, both receiving standard debridement. The primary endpoint was clinical efficacy at day 1 after the end of treatment (EOT1). Secondary endpoints included clinical efficacy at day 7 (EOT7), microbiological efficacy, drug-resistant bacteria clearance rate, wound healing rate, and safety outcomes evaluated at both EOT1 and EOT7.

The study included 47 participants, with 32 in the PL-5 group and 15 in the placebo group. Both groups had statistically comparable demographic and clinical characteristics. The primary endpoint showed a higher clinical efficacy (cure/improvement ratio) in the PL-5 group, compared with the control group (1.33 vs 0.55; P =.0764), suggesting a positive trend but not reaching statistical significance in this population.

Among the secondary endpoints, clinical efficacy at EOT7 was significantly higher in the PL-5 group than in the control group (1.6 vs 0.86). Microbial eradication rates were notably better in the PL-5 group at both EOT1 (57.89% vs 33.33%) and EOT7 (64.71% vs 40.00%). The clearance rates of drug-resistant bacteria were also higher in the PL-5 group at EOT1 (71.43% vs 50%).

Of importance, safety parameters showed no significant differences between the two groups (24.24% vs 33.33%), highlighting the favorable safety profile of PL-5 spray.

The study presented at the ADA Scientific Sessions provides a glint of promising evidence supporting the potential efficacy and safety of PL-5 spray in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot infections. Despite the limited sample size, the results suggest that PL-5 spray may enhance the recovery speed of diabetic foot wounds, particularly in clearing drug-resistant bacterial infections. These findings justify further investigation with larger sample sizes to confirm or refute the efficacy and potentially establish PL-5 spray as a standard treatment option in diabetic foot care.

The novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray shows potential in addressing the challenging issue of diabetic foot infections. This recent ADA presentation sparked significant interest and discussions about the future of diabetic foot ulcer treatments, emphasizing the importance of innovative approaches in managing complex diabetic complications.

Dr. Armstrong is a professor of surgery and director of limb preservation at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

At the recent American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions, researchers unveiled promising data on a novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray. This innovative treatment shows significant promise for managing mild to moderate infected diabetic foot ulcers. 

Of the 1.6 million people with diabetes in the United States and the tens of millions of similar people worldwide, 50% will require antimicrobials at some time during their life cycle. Diabetic foot infections are difficult to treat because of their resistance to conventional therapies, often leading to severe complications, including amputations. 

To address this issue, the antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray was developed with a novel mechanism of action to potentially improve treatment outcomes. The study aimed to assess the clinical efficacy and safety of the PL-5 spray combined with standard debridement procedures in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers.

This multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in four hospitals across China. Participants with mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to either the PL-5 group or the placebo group, both receiving standard debridement. The primary endpoint was clinical efficacy at day 1 after the end of treatment (EOT1). Secondary endpoints included clinical efficacy at day 7 (EOT7), microbiological efficacy, drug-resistant bacteria clearance rate, wound healing rate, and safety outcomes evaluated at both EOT1 and EOT7.

The study included 47 participants, with 32 in the PL-5 group and 15 in the placebo group. Both groups had statistically comparable demographic and clinical characteristics. The primary endpoint showed a higher clinical efficacy (cure/improvement ratio) in the PL-5 group, compared with the control group (1.33 vs 0.55; P =.0764), suggesting a positive trend but not reaching statistical significance in this population.

Among the secondary endpoints, clinical efficacy at EOT7 was significantly higher in the PL-5 group than in the control group (1.6 vs 0.86). Microbial eradication rates were notably better in the PL-5 group at both EOT1 (57.89% vs 33.33%) and EOT7 (64.71% vs 40.00%). The clearance rates of drug-resistant bacteria were also higher in the PL-5 group at EOT1 (71.43% vs 50%).

Of importance, safety parameters showed no significant differences between the two groups (24.24% vs 33.33%), highlighting the favorable safety profile of PL-5 spray.

The study presented at the ADA Scientific Sessions provides a glint of promising evidence supporting the potential efficacy and safety of PL-5 spray in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot infections. Despite the limited sample size, the results suggest that PL-5 spray may enhance the recovery speed of diabetic foot wounds, particularly in clearing drug-resistant bacterial infections. These findings justify further investigation with larger sample sizes to confirm or refute the efficacy and potentially establish PL-5 spray as a standard treatment option in diabetic foot care.

The novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray shows potential in addressing the challenging issue of diabetic foot infections. This recent ADA presentation sparked significant interest and discussions about the future of diabetic foot ulcer treatments, emphasizing the importance of innovative approaches in managing complex diabetic complications.

Dr. Armstrong is a professor of surgery and director of limb preservation at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

At the recent American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions, researchers unveiled promising data on a novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray. This innovative treatment shows significant promise for managing mild to moderate infected diabetic foot ulcers. 

Of the 1.6 million people with diabetes in the United States and the tens of millions of similar people worldwide, 50% will require antimicrobials at some time during their life cycle. Diabetic foot infections are difficult to treat because of their resistance to conventional therapies, often leading to severe complications, including amputations. 

To address this issue, the antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray was developed with a novel mechanism of action to potentially improve treatment outcomes. The study aimed to assess the clinical efficacy and safety of the PL-5 spray combined with standard debridement procedures in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers.

This multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted in four hospitals across China. Participants with mild to moderate diabetic foot ulcers were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to either the PL-5 group or the placebo group, both receiving standard debridement. The primary endpoint was clinical efficacy at day 1 after the end of treatment (EOT1). Secondary endpoints included clinical efficacy at day 7 (EOT7), microbiological efficacy, drug-resistant bacteria clearance rate, wound healing rate, and safety outcomes evaluated at both EOT1 and EOT7.

The study included 47 participants, with 32 in the PL-5 group and 15 in the placebo group. Both groups had statistically comparable demographic and clinical characteristics. The primary endpoint showed a higher clinical efficacy (cure/improvement ratio) in the PL-5 group, compared with the control group (1.33 vs 0.55; P =.0764), suggesting a positive trend but not reaching statistical significance in this population.

Among the secondary endpoints, clinical efficacy at EOT7 was significantly higher in the PL-5 group than in the control group (1.6 vs 0.86). Microbial eradication rates were notably better in the PL-5 group at both EOT1 (57.89% vs 33.33%) and EOT7 (64.71% vs 40.00%). The clearance rates of drug-resistant bacteria were also higher in the PL-5 group at EOT1 (71.43% vs 50%).

Of importance, safety parameters showed no significant differences between the two groups (24.24% vs 33.33%), highlighting the favorable safety profile of PL-5 spray.

The study presented at the ADA Scientific Sessions provides a glint of promising evidence supporting the potential efficacy and safety of PL-5 spray in treating mild to moderate diabetic foot infections. Despite the limited sample size, the results suggest that PL-5 spray may enhance the recovery speed of diabetic foot wounds, particularly in clearing drug-resistant bacterial infections. These findings justify further investigation with larger sample sizes to confirm or refute the efficacy and potentially establish PL-5 spray as a standard treatment option in diabetic foot care.

The novel antimicrobial peptide PL-5 spray shows potential in addressing the challenging issue of diabetic foot infections. This recent ADA presentation sparked significant interest and discussions about the future of diabetic foot ulcer treatments, emphasizing the importance of innovative approaches in managing complex diabetic complications.

Dr. Armstrong is a professor of surgery and director of limb preservation at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Rachel S. Rubin, MD: As a sexual medicine specialist, I treat a lot of menopause. Why? Because menopausal complaints are not just hot flashes and night sweats; we see so many sexual health problems: genital urinary syndrome of menopause (GUSM), low libido, pain with sex, arousal disorders, orgasm disorders. I am joined today with a superstar in the menopause field, Dr. Stephanie Faubion. Introduce yourself to our amazing listeners.

Stephanie S. Faubion, MD, MBA: I am Stephanie Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health and medical director for the Menopause Society.

Dr. Rubin: That is a very short introduction for a very impressive person who really is an authority, if you’ve ever read an article about menopause. I asked Dr. Faubion if she spends all her time talking to reporters. But it’s very important because menopause is having a moment. We can’t go a day without seeing a headline, an Instagram story, or something; my feed is full of menopause information. Why do you think menopause is having a moment right now?

Dr. Faubion: It’s a well-deserved moment and should have happened a long time ago. It’s having a moment for several reasons. The generation of women experiencing perimenopause and menopause is different now; they are less willing to suffer in silence, which is a great thing. We’ve also created a little bit of a care vacuum. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study came out in 2002, and after that, we really left women with few choices about what to take to manage their symptoms. That created a vacuum. 

After that, clinicians decided they no longer needed to worry about being educated about menopause because there was really nothing to do for menopause if we weren’t going to use hormone therapy. Where we’ve come to now is women are having symptoms; they’re having a problem. It’s affecting all aspects of their lives: their relationships, their quality of life, their ability to work. And they’re saying, “Hey, this isn’t right. We need to do something about this.” There’s still very little research in this area. We have a lot more to do. They’re demanding answers, as they should. 

Dr. Rubin: We have quite a lot of tools in our toolbox that are evidence based, that really work and help people. I always say to my patients, “You have a generation of clinicians who were not taught how to do this well. Hormones are not all good or all bad, all right or all wrong, but they require some understanding of when to use them and how to safely use them.” That way, you can avoid your patients going to the snake oil salesmen down the street selling non–evidence-based treatments. 

One article that came out this year that I thought was really fascinating was about what we are calling NFLM: not feeling like myself. I will tell you, I think it’s brilliant because there is not a woman aged 40 or above who doesn’t deeply connect with the idea of NFLM. Can you speak to the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause beyond hot flashes and night sweats? I named a few sexual symptoms earlier. We’re really learning about all these new areas to understand, what is perimenopause? 

Dr. Faubion: Very rarely does a woman come in and say, “I have hot flashes” and I say, “Well, is that all you have?” “Yep. That’s all I have. I just have a couple of hot flashes.” That almost never happens, as you know. Menopause is not just about hot flashes, although that’s one of the most common symptoms. Hot flashes also occur at night. We call them night sweats when that happens. But there’s the sleep disturbance, which is probably not just related to night sweats but a lot of other things as well. Mood symptoms can be crazy. A lot of women come in with descriptions of irritability, just not feeling right, or feeling anxious. Another common symptom that we’re learning about is joint aches. 

It’s important to remember when we’re talking about these symptoms that estrogen affects every tissue and organ system in the body. And when you lose it, you have effects in pretty much every tissue and organ system in the body. So, it’s not just about hot flashes and night sweats. We’ve also learned recently that women in perimenopause can have the same symptoms that women have after menopause. It’s not just that it starts at menopause. 

Dr. Rubin: This is really important because we are speaking to the primary care world. The way medicine is set up, you’re allowed to have one problem. If you have more than one problem, I don’t know what to do. You go in the crazy bucket of we’re not interested or we don’t have time to take care of you. But menopause is never one problem. So, the disaster here is that these women are getting diagnosed with a mental health condition, with fibromyalgia, with dry eye, with sexual dysfunction, with depression or anxiety. They’re getting 10 diagnoses for what is actually one underlying hypogonadal problem. 

Dr. Faubion: That’s exactly right. I’ve seen a woman at the Mayo Clinic, who came to me as a general internist, not even knowing I did menopause. She traveled across the country to see me. She’s gaining weight, she’s losing her hair, she’s sweating. She thinks there is something horribly wrong with her, like she must have cancer or something. When you put it all together — the palpitations and the rest — it was all menopause. Think of the expense to come to the Mayo Clinic and be evaluated for that. But no one, including her, had put together the fact that all of these symptoms were related to menopause. You’re exactly right. Sometimes women don’t even recognize that it’s all related. 

Dr. Rubin: For the primary care viewers, we were raised on the idea that hormones cause cancer. Can you speak to that? What are the data in 2024? Am I going to die if I take hormone therapy? Am I going to risk blood clots and horrible cancers? 

Dr. Faubion: To be brief, we now know who the best candidates are for hormone therapy, and we can really minimize risk. We also know that there are differences between the formulations that we use, the route of delivery, and the dose. We can really individualize this for the woman. 

When it comes down to cancer risk, the WHI found that if you have a uterus and you’re taking both an estrogen and a progestogen (specifically conjugated equine estrogen and medroxyprogesterone acetate), the risk for breast cancer was increased slightly. When I say “slightly,” I’m talking the same as the increase in breast cancer risk of drinking one to two glasses of wine a night, or being overweight, or being inactive. We are really talking about less than one case per thousand women per year after about 5 years of hormone therapy. So, it’s a very small increased risk.

In contrast, the data showed that the risk for breast cancer did not appear to be increased in women who did not have a uterus and were using conjugated equine estrogen alone, either during the study or in the 18-year follow-up. The blood clot risk associated with estrogen-containing hormone therapy can be minimized with transdermal preparations of estrogen, particularly with lower doses. Overall, we don’t see that these risks are prohibitive for most women, and if they are having bothersome symptoms, they can use an estrogen-containing product safely. 

Dr. Rubin: We can learn new things, right? For example, the new GLP-1 drugs, which is also very fascinating — using those in perimenopause and menopause. A GLP-1 deficiency may be increased as you go to perimenopause and menopause. By adding back hormones, maybe we can help keep muscle around, keep mental health better, and keep bones stronger, because osteoporosis and fractures kill more people than breast cancer does. 

So, as a primary care clinician, how do we learn to write prescriptions for hormone therapy? How do we learn how to counsel patients properly? Do we have to go back and take a fellowship? How do I learn how to integrate the evidence into my practice? 

Dr. Faubion: An easy thing to do to gain confidence is take a course. The North American Menopause Society has an annual meeting in Chicago in September, and we do a Menopause 101 course for clinicians there. It’s also available online. There are ways to get this information in a digestible way to where you can learn the basics: Here’s where I start; here’s how I need to follow it up. It’s really not that difficult to get into this. 

As to your point about the GLP-1 drugs, we all have to learn new things every day because treatments change, drugs change, etc. Although hormones have been out there for a long time, many clinicians haven’t had the experience of treating menopausal women. I would put a plea out to my primary care colleagues in internal medicine and family medicine that you need to be doing this. Think about it — you already are the expert on brain health and bone health and heart health. You should be the most comfortable in dealing with hormone therapy that has effects throughout the entire body. It’s important for us as primary care providers to really have a handle on this and to be the owners of managing menopause for women in midlife. 

Dr. Rubin: I couldn’t agree more. As a sexual medicine doctor, treating menopausal women is actually what fuels my soul and stops all burnout because they get better. My clinic is full of a fifty-something-year-old people who come back and they say sex is good. “My relationship is good.” “I’m kicking butt at work.” I have a patient who just started law school because she feels good, and she says, “I’m keeping up with the 20-year-olds.” It is incredible to see people who feel terrible and then watch them blossom and get better. There’s nothing that fuels my soul more than these patients. 

What is exciting you in the menopause world? What are you hopeful for down the road with some of these new initiatives coming out? 

Dr. Faubion: The fact that we have a president of the United States and a National Institutes of Health who are more interested in looking at menopause is amazing. It’s an exciting time; there’s more interest, and more research funding seems to be available for the United States. 

In terms of clinical management, we now have so many options available to women. We’ve been talking about hormone therapy, but we now have nonhormonal medications out there as well that are on the market, such as fezolinetant, a neurokinin 3 inhibitor that came out last year. There’s probably another one coming out in the next year or so. So, women have lots of options, and for the first time, we can really individualize treatment for women and look at what symptoms are bothering them, and how best to get them back to where they should be. 

We’re also starting a menopause-in-the-workplace initiative with the Menopause Society and really kind of tackling that one. We know that a lot of women are missing work, not taking a promotion, or avoiding a leadership role because of their menopause symptoms. Women should never be in the position of compromising their work lives because of menopause symptoms. This is something we can help women with. 

Dr. Rubin: Our big takeaway today is: Believe your patients when they come to you, and they’ve driven and parked and arranged childcare, and showed up to your office and waited to see you. When they’re telling you that they have all these symptoms and they’re not feeling like themselves, maybe before you jump straight to the SSRI or just say, “Do some yoga and deep breathing,” maybe really dive into the menopause literature and understand the pros and cons, and the risks and benefits of hormone therapy. We do it with so many other things. We can do it with hormone therapy as well. It is not a one-size-fits-all. We do need to talk to our patients, customize their care, and really figure out what they care about and what they want. Patients are able to understand risks and benefits and can make good decisions for themselves.

Dr. Rubin is an assistant clinical professor, Department of Urology, at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She reported conflicts of interest with Sprout, Maternal Medical, Absorption Pharmaceuticals, GSK, and Endo.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Rachel S. Rubin, MD: As a sexual medicine specialist, I treat a lot of menopause. Why? Because menopausal complaints are not just hot flashes and night sweats; we see so many sexual health problems: genital urinary syndrome of menopause (GUSM), low libido, pain with sex, arousal disorders, orgasm disorders. I am joined today with a superstar in the menopause field, Dr. Stephanie Faubion. Introduce yourself to our amazing listeners.

Stephanie S. Faubion, MD, MBA: I am Stephanie Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health and medical director for the Menopause Society.

Dr. Rubin: That is a very short introduction for a very impressive person who really is an authority, if you’ve ever read an article about menopause. I asked Dr. Faubion if she spends all her time talking to reporters. But it’s very important because menopause is having a moment. We can’t go a day without seeing a headline, an Instagram story, or something; my feed is full of menopause information. Why do you think menopause is having a moment right now?

Dr. Faubion: It’s a well-deserved moment and should have happened a long time ago. It’s having a moment for several reasons. The generation of women experiencing perimenopause and menopause is different now; they are less willing to suffer in silence, which is a great thing. We’ve also created a little bit of a care vacuum. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study came out in 2002, and after that, we really left women with few choices about what to take to manage their symptoms. That created a vacuum. 

After that, clinicians decided they no longer needed to worry about being educated about menopause because there was really nothing to do for menopause if we weren’t going to use hormone therapy. Where we’ve come to now is women are having symptoms; they’re having a problem. It’s affecting all aspects of their lives: their relationships, their quality of life, their ability to work. And they’re saying, “Hey, this isn’t right. We need to do something about this.” There’s still very little research in this area. We have a lot more to do. They’re demanding answers, as they should. 

Dr. Rubin: We have quite a lot of tools in our toolbox that are evidence based, that really work and help people. I always say to my patients, “You have a generation of clinicians who were not taught how to do this well. Hormones are not all good or all bad, all right or all wrong, but they require some understanding of when to use them and how to safely use them.” That way, you can avoid your patients going to the snake oil salesmen down the street selling non–evidence-based treatments. 

One article that came out this year that I thought was really fascinating was about what we are calling NFLM: not feeling like myself. I will tell you, I think it’s brilliant because there is not a woman aged 40 or above who doesn’t deeply connect with the idea of NFLM. Can you speak to the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause beyond hot flashes and night sweats? I named a few sexual symptoms earlier. We’re really learning about all these new areas to understand, what is perimenopause? 

Dr. Faubion: Very rarely does a woman come in and say, “I have hot flashes” and I say, “Well, is that all you have?” “Yep. That’s all I have. I just have a couple of hot flashes.” That almost never happens, as you know. Menopause is not just about hot flashes, although that’s one of the most common symptoms. Hot flashes also occur at night. We call them night sweats when that happens. But there’s the sleep disturbance, which is probably not just related to night sweats but a lot of other things as well. Mood symptoms can be crazy. A lot of women come in with descriptions of irritability, just not feeling right, or feeling anxious. Another common symptom that we’re learning about is joint aches. 

It’s important to remember when we’re talking about these symptoms that estrogen affects every tissue and organ system in the body. And when you lose it, you have effects in pretty much every tissue and organ system in the body. So, it’s not just about hot flashes and night sweats. We’ve also learned recently that women in perimenopause can have the same symptoms that women have after menopause. It’s not just that it starts at menopause. 

Dr. Rubin: This is really important because we are speaking to the primary care world. The way medicine is set up, you’re allowed to have one problem. If you have more than one problem, I don’t know what to do. You go in the crazy bucket of we’re not interested or we don’t have time to take care of you. But menopause is never one problem. So, the disaster here is that these women are getting diagnosed with a mental health condition, with fibromyalgia, with dry eye, with sexual dysfunction, with depression or anxiety. They’re getting 10 diagnoses for what is actually one underlying hypogonadal problem. 

Dr. Faubion: That’s exactly right. I’ve seen a woman at the Mayo Clinic, who came to me as a general internist, not even knowing I did menopause. She traveled across the country to see me. She’s gaining weight, she’s losing her hair, she’s sweating. She thinks there is something horribly wrong with her, like she must have cancer or something. When you put it all together — the palpitations and the rest — it was all menopause. Think of the expense to come to the Mayo Clinic and be evaluated for that. But no one, including her, had put together the fact that all of these symptoms were related to menopause. You’re exactly right. Sometimes women don’t even recognize that it’s all related. 

Dr. Rubin: For the primary care viewers, we were raised on the idea that hormones cause cancer. Can you speak to that? What are the data in 2024? Am I going to die if I take hormone therapy? Am I going to risk blood clots and horrible cancers? 

Dr. Faubion: To be brief, we now know who the best candidates are for hormone therapy, and we can really minimize risk. We also know that there are differences between the formulations that we use, the route of delivery, and the dose. We can really individualize this for the woman. 

When it comes down to cancer risk, the WHI found that if you have a uterus and you’re taking both an estrogen and a progestogen (specifically conjugated equine estrogen and medroxyprogesterone acetate), the risk for breast cancer was increased slightly. When I say “slightly,” I’m talking the same as the increase in breast cancer risk of drinking one to two glasses of wine a night, or being overweight, or being inactive. We are really talking about less than one case per thousand women per year after about 5 years of hormone therapy. So, it’s a very small increased risk.

In contrast, the data showed that the risk for breast cancer did not appear to be increased in women who did not have a uterus and were using conjugated equine estrogen alone, either during the study or in the 18-year follow-up. The blood clot risk associated with estrogen-containing hormone therapy can be minimized with transdermal preparations of estrogen, particularly with lower doses. Overall, we don’t see that these risks are prohibitive for most women, and if they are having bothersome symptoms, they can use an estrogen-containing product safely. 

Dr. Rubin: We can learn new things, right? For example, the new GLP-1 drugs, which is also very fascinating — using those in perimenopause and menopause. A GLP-1 deficiency may be increased as you go to perimenopause and menopause. By adding back hormones, maybe we can help keep muscle around, keep mental health better, and keep bones stronger, because osteoporosis and fractures kill more people than breast cancer does. 

So, as a primary care clinician, how do we learn to write prescriptions for hormone therapy? How do we learn how to counsel patients properly? Do we have to go back and take a fellowship? How do I learn how to integrate the evidence into my practice? 

Dr. Faubion: An easy thing to do to gain confidence is take a course. The North American Menopause Society has an annual meeting in Chicago in September, and we do a Menopause 101 course for clinicians there. It’s also available online. There are ways to get this information in a digestible way to where you can learn the basics: Here’s where I start; here’s how I need to follow it up. It’s really not that difficult to get into this. 

As to your point about the GLP-1 drugs, we all have to learn new things every day because treatments change, drugs change, etc. Although hormones have been out there for a long time, many clinicians haven’t had the experience of treating menopausal women. I would put a plea out to my primary care colleagues in internal medicine and family medicine that you need to be doing this. Think about it — you already are the expert on brain health and bone health and heart health. You should be the most comfortable in dealing with hormone therapy that has effects throughout the entire body. It’s important for us as primary care providers to really have a handle on this and to be the owners of managing menopause for women in midlife. 

Dr. Rubin: I couldn’t agree more. As a sexual medicine doctor, treating menopausal women is actually what fuels my soul and stops all burnout because they get better. My clinic is full of a fifty-something-year-old people who come back and they say sex is good. “My relationship is good.” “I’m kicking butt at work.” I have a patient who just started law school because she feels good, and she says, “I’m keeping up with the 20-year-olds.” It is incredible to see people who feel terrible and then watch them blossom and get better. There’s nothing that fuels my soul more than these patients. 

What is exciting you in the menopause world? What are you hopeful for down the road with some of these new initiatives coming out? 

Dr. Faubion: The fact that we have a president of the United States and a National Institutes of Health who are more interested in looking at menopause is amazing. It’s an exciting time; there’s more interest, and more research funding seems to be available for the United States. 

In terms of clinical management, we now have so many options available to women. We’ve been talking about hormone therapy, but we now have nonhormonal medications out there as well that are on the market, such as fezolinetant, a neurokinin 3 inhibitor that came out last year. There’s probably another one coming out in the next year or so. So, women have lots of options, and for the first time, we can really individualize treatment for women and look at what symptoms are bothering them, and how best to get them back to where they should be. 

We’re also starting a menopause-in-the-workplace initiative with the Menopause Society and really kind of tackling that one. We know that a lot of women are missing work, not taking a promotion, or avoiding a leadership role because of their menopause symptoms. Women should never be in the position of compromising their work lives because of menopause symptoms. This is something we can help women with. 

Dr. Rubin: Our big takeaway today is: Believe your patients when they come to you, and they’ve driven and parked and arranged childcare, and showed up to your office and waited to see you. When they’re telling you that they have all these symptoms and they’re not feeling like themselves, maybe before you jump straight to the SSRI or just say, “Do some yoga and deep breathing,” maybe really dive into the menopause literature and understand the pros and cons, and the risks and benefits of hormone therapy. We do it with so many other things. We can do it with hormone therapy as well. It is not a one-size-fits-all. We do need to talk to our patients, customize their care, and really figure out what they care about and what they want. Patients are able to understand risks and benefits and can make good decisions for themselves.

Dr. Rubin is an assistant clinical professor, Department of Urology, at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She reported conflicts of interest with Sprout, Maternal Medical, Absorption Pharmaceuticals, GSK, and Endo.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Rachel S. Rubin, MD: As a sexual medicine specialist, I treat a lot of menopause. Why? Because menopausal complaints are not just hot flashes and night sweats; we see so many sexual health problems: genital urinary syndrome of menopause (GUSM), low libido, pain with sex, arousal disorders, orgasm disorders. I am joined today with a superstar in the menopause field, Dr. Stephanie Faubion. Introduce yourself to our amazing listeners.

Stephanie S. Faubion, MD, MBA: I am Stephanie Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health and medical director for the Menopause Society.

Dr. Rubin: That is a very short introduction for a very impressive person who really is an authority, if you’ve ever read an article about menopause. I asked Dr. Faubion if she spends all her time talking to reporters. But it’s very important because menopause is having a moment. We can’t go a day without seeing a headline, an Instagram story, or something; my feed is full of menopause information. Why do you think menopause is having a moment right now?

Dr. Faubion: It’s a well-deserved moment and should have happened a long time ago. It’s having a moment for several reasons. The generation of women experiencing perimenopause and menopause is different now; they are less willing to suffer in silence, which is a great thing. We’ve also created a little bit of a care vacuum. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study came out in 2002, and after that, we really left women with few choices about what to take to manage their symptoms. That created a vacuum. 

After that, clinicians decided they no longer needed to worry about being educated about menopause because there was really nothing to do for menopause if we weren’t going to use hormone therapy. Where we’ve come to now is women are having symptoms; they’re having a problem. It’s affecting all aspects of their lives: their relationships, their quality of life, their ability to work. And they’re saying, “Hey, this isn’t right. We need to do something about this.” There’s still very little research in this area. We have a lot more to do. They’re demanding answers, as they should. 

Dr. Rubin: We have quite a lot of tools in our toolbox that are evidence based, that really work and help people. I always say to my patients, “You have a generation of clinicians who were not taught how to do this well. Hormones are not all good or all bad, all right or all wrong, but they require some understanding of when to use them and how to safely use them.” That way, you can avoid your patients going to the snake oil salesmen down the street selling non–evidence-based treatments. 

One article that came out this year that I thought was really fascinating was about what we are calling NFLM: not feeling like myself. I will tell you, I think it’s brilliant because there is not a woman aged 40 or above who doesn’t deeply connect with the idea of NFLM. Can you speak to the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause beyond hot flashes and night sweats? I named a few sexual symptoms earlier. We’re really learning about all these new areas to understand, what is perimenopause? 

Dr. Faubion: Very rarely does a woman come in and say, “I have hot flashes” and I say, “Well, is that all you have?” “Yep. That’s all I have. I just have a couple of hot flashes.” That almost never happens, as you know. Menopause is not just about hot flashes, although that’s one of the most common symptoms. Hot flashes also occur at night. We call them night sweats when that happens. But there’s the sleep disturbance, which is probably not just related to night sweats but a lot of other things as well. Mood symptoms can be crazy. A lot of women come in with descriptions of irritability, just not feeling right, or feeling anxious. Another common symptom that we’re learning about is joint aches. 

It’s important to remember when we’re talking about these symptoms that estrogen affects every tissue and organ system in the body. And when you lose it, you have effects in pretty much every tissue and organ system in the body. So, it’s not just about hot flashes and night sweats. We’ve also learned recently that women in perimenopause can have the same symptoms that women have after menopause. It’s not just that it starts at menopause. 

Dr. Rubin: This is really important because we are speaking to the primary care world. The way medicine is set up, you’re allowed to have one problem. If you have more than one problem, I don’t know what to do. You go in the crazy bucket of we’re not interested or we don’t have time to take care of you. But menopause is never one problem. So, the disaster here is that these women are getting diagnosed with a mental health condition, with fibromyalgia, with dry eye, with sexual dysfunction, with depression or anxiety. They’re getting 10 diagnoses for what is actually one underlying hypogonadal problem. 

Dr. Faubion: That’s exactly right. I’ve seen a woman at the Mayo Clinic, who came to me as a general internist, not even knowing I did menopause. She traveled across the country to see me. She’s gaining weight, she’s losing her hair, she’s sweating. She thinks there is something horribly wrong with her, like she must have cancer or something. When you put it all together — the palpitations and the rest — it was all menopause. Think of the expense to come to the Mayo Clinic and be evaluated for that. But no one, including her, had put together the fact that all of these symptoms were related to menopause. You’re exactly right. Sometimes women don’t even recognize that it’s all related. 

Dr. Rubin: For the primary care viewers, we were raised on the idea that hormones cause cancer. Can you speak to that? What are the data in 2024? Am I going to die if I take hormone therapy? Am I going to risk blood clots and horrible cancers? 

Dr. Faubion: To be brief, we now know who the best candidates are for hormone therapy, and we can really minimize risk. We also know that there are differences between the formulations that we use, the route of delivery, and the dose. We can really individualize this for the woman. 

When it comes down to cancer risk, the WHI found that if you have a uterus and you’re taking both an estrogen and a progestogen (specifically conjugated equine estrogen and medroxyprogesterone acetate), the risk for breast cancer was increased slightly. When I say “slightly,” I’m talking the same as the increase in breast cancer risk of drinking one to two glasses of wine a night, or being overweight, or being inactive. We are really talking about less than one case per thousand women per year after about 5 years of hormone therapy. So, it’s a very small increased risk.

In contrast, the data showed that the risk for breast cancer did not appear to be increased in women who did not have a uterus and were using conjugated equine estrogen alone, either during the study or in the 18-year follow-up. The blood clot risk associated with estrogen-containing hormone therapy can be minimized with transdermal preparations of estrogen, particularly with lower doses. Overall, we don’t see that these risks are prohibitive for most women, and if they are having bothersome symptoms, they can use an estrogen-containing product safely. 

Dr. Rubin: We can learn new things, right? For example, the new GLP-1 drugs, which is also very fascinating — using those in perimenopause and menopause. A GLP-1 deficiency may be increased as you go to perimenopause and menopause. By adding back hormones, maybe we can help keep muscle around, keep mental health better, and keep bones stronger, because osteoporosis and fractures kill more people than breast cancer does. 

So, as a primary care clinician, how do we learn to write prescriptions for hormone therapy? How do we learn how to counsel patients properly? Do we have to go back and take a fellowship? How do I learn how to integrate the evidence into my practice? 

Dr. Faubion: An easy thing to do to gain confidence is take a course. The North American Menopause Society has an annual meeting in Chicago in September, and we do a Menopause 101 course for clinicians there. It’s also available online. There are ways to get this information in a digestible way to where you can learn the basics: Here’s where I start; here’s how I need to follow it up. It’s really not that difficult to get into this. 

As to your point about the GLP-1 drugs, we all have to learn new things every day because treatments change, drugs change, etc. Although hormones have been out there for a long time, many clinicians haven’t had the experience of treating menopausal women. I would put a plea out to my primary care colleagues in internal medicine and family medicine that you need to be doing this. Think about it — you already are the expert on brain health and bone health and heart health. You should be the most comfortable in dealing with hormone therapy that has effects throughout the entire body. It’s important for us as primary care providers to really have a handle on this and to be the owners of managing menopause for women in midlife. 

Dr. Rubin: I couldn’t agree more. As a sexual medicine doctor, treating menopausal women is actually what fuels my soul and stops all burnout because they get better. My clinic is full of a fifty-something-year-old people who come back and they say sex is good. “My relationship is good.” “I’m kicking butt at work.” I have a patient who just started law school because she feels good, and she says, “I’m keeping up with the 20-year-olds.” It is incredible to see people who feel terrible and then watch them blossom and get better. There’s nothing that fuels my soul more than these patients. 

What is exciting you in the menopause world? What are you hopeful for down the road with some of these new initiatives coming out? 

Dr. Faubion: The fact that we have a president of the United States and a National Institutes of Health who are more interested in looking at menopause is amazing. It’s an exciting time; there’s more interest, and more research funding seems to be available for the United States. 

In terms of clinical management, we now have so many options available to women. We’ve been talking about hormone therapy, but we now have nonhormonal medications out there as well that are on the market, such as fezolinetant, a neurokinin 3 inhibitor that came out last year. There’s probably another one coming out in the next year or so. So, women have lots of options, and for the first time, we can really individualize treatment for women and look at what symptoms are bothering them, and how best to get them back to where they should be. 

We’re also starting a menopause-in-the-workplace initiative with the Menopause Society and really kind of tackling that one. We know that a lot of women are missing work, not taking a promotion, or avoiding a leadership role because of their menopause symptoms. Women should never be in the position of compromising their work lives because of menopause symptoms. This is something we can help women with. 

Dr. Rubin: Our big takeaway today is: Believe your patients when they come to you, and they’ve driven and parked and arranged childcare, and showed up to your office and waited to see you. When they’re telling you that they have all these symptoms and they’re not feeling like themselves, maybe before you jump straight to the SSRI or just say, “Do some yoga and deep breathing,” maybe really dive into the menopause literature and understand the pros and cons, and the risks and benefits of hormone therapy. We do it with so many other things. We can do it with hormone therapy as well. It is not a one-size-fits-all. We do need to talk to our patients, customize their care, and really figure out what they care about and what they want. Patients are able to understand risks and benefits and can make good decisions for themselves.

Dr. Rubin is an assistant clinical professor, Department of Urology, at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She reported conflicts of interest with Sprout, Maternal Medical, Absorption Pharmaceuticals, GSK, and Endo.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

TOPLINE:

Men with immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related disease exhibit significantly lower serum lipase levels and a greater likelihood of organ involvement than women, highlighting significant sex-dependent differences in disease manifestations.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a retrospective study of 328 patients (69% men) diagnosed with IgG4-related disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital – Rheumatology Clinic, Boston, who met the American College of Rheumatology–European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (ACR-EULAR) classification criteria between January 2008 and May 2023.
• Among the 328 patients, 69% were men and 31% were women, with a significant male-to-female ratio of 2.2:1.0. Men were typically older at diagnosis (median age, 63.7 vs 58.2 years).
• Data on serum lipase levels, renal involvement, and other clinical and laboratory parameters were collected.

TAKEAWAY:

• Men had higher baseline ACR-EULAR scores, indicating more severe disease (median score of 35.0 vs 29.5; P = .0010).
• Male patients demonstrated a median baseline serum lipase concentration of 24.5 U/L, significantly lower than the 33.5 U/L observed in women.
• Pancreatic (50% vs 26%) or renal (36% vs 18%) involvement was more common in men.
• Men exhibited higher IgG4 levels (P = .0050) and active B-cell responses in the blood (P = .0095).

IN PRACTICE:

According to the authors, this work confirms “the impression of an important sex disparity among patients with IgG4-related disease, with most patients being male, and male patients demonstrating strong tendencies toward more severe disease than female patients.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Isha Jha, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. It was published online on May 30, 2024, in The Lancet Rheumatology. 

LIMITATIONS:

The study’s retrospective design may limit the ability to establish causality between sex differences and IgG4-related disease manifestations. A relatively small percentage of patients were assessed before receiving any immunosuppressive treatment, potentially influencing the observed clinical parameters.

DISCLOSURES:

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Some authors declared financial ties outside this work.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

TOPLINE:

Men with immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related disease exhibit significantly lower serum lipase levels and a greater likelihood of organ involvement than women, highlighting significant sex-dependent differences in disease manifestations.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a retrospective study of 328 patients (69% men) diagnosed with IgG4-related disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital – Rheumatology Clinic, Boston, who met the American College of Rheumatology–European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (ACR-EULAR) classification criteria between January 2008 and May 2023.
• Among the 328 patients, 69% were men and 31% were women, with a significant male-to-female ratio of 2.2:1.0. Men were typically older at diagnosis (median age, 63.7 vs 58.2 years).
• Data on serum lipase levels, renal involvement, and other clinical and laboratory parameters were collected.

TAKEAWAY:

• Men had higher baseline ACR-EULAR scores, indicating more severe disease (median score of 35.0 vs 29.5; P = .0010).
• Male patients demonstrated a median baseline serum lipase concentration of 24.5 U/L, significantly lower than the 33.5 U/L observed in women.
• Pancreatic (50% vs 26%) or renal (36% vs 18%) involvement was more common in men.
• Men exhibited higher IgG4 levels (P = .0050) and active B-cell responses in the blood (P = .0095).

IN PRACTICE:

According to the authors, this work confirms “the impression of an important sex disparity among patients with IgG4-related disease, with most patients being male, and male patients demonstrating strong tendencies toward more severe disease than female patients.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Isha Jha, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. It was published online on May 30, 2024, in The Lancet Rheumatology. 

LIMITATIONS:

The study’s retrospective design may limit the ability to establish causality between sex differences and IgG4-related disease manifestations. A relatively small percentage of patients were assessed before receiving any immunosuppressive treatment, potentially influencing the observed clinical parameters.

DISCLOSURES:

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Some authors declared financial ties outside this work.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

TOPLINE:

Men with immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related disease exhibit significantly lower serum lipase levels and a greater likelihood of organ involvement than women, highlighting significant sex-dependent differences in disease manifestations.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a retrospective study of 328 patients (69% men) diagnosed with IgG4-related disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital – Rheumatology Clinic, Boston, who met the American College of Rheumatology–European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (ACR-EULAR) classification criteria between January 2008 and May 2023.
• Among the 328 patients, 69% were men and 31% were women, with a significant male-to-female ratio of 2.2:1.0. Men were typically older at diagnosis (median age, 63.7 vs 58.2 years).
• Data on serum lipase levels, renal involvement, and other clinical and laboratory parameters were collected.

TAKEAWAY:

• Men had higher baseline ACR-EULAR scores, indicating more severe disease (median score of 35.0 vs 29.5; P = .0010).
• Male patients demonstrated a median baseline serum lipase concentration of 24.5 U/L, significantly lower than the 33.5 U/L observed in women.
• Pancreatic (50% vs 26%) or renal (36% vs 18%) involvement was more common in men.
• Men exhibited higher IgG4 levels (P = .0050) and active B-cell responses in the blood (P = .0095).

IN PRACTICE:

According to the authors, this work confirms “the impression of an important sex disparity among patients with IgG4-related disease, with most patients being male, and male patients demonstrating strong tendencies toward more severe disease than female patients.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Isha Jha, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. It was published online on May 30, 2024, in The Lancet Rheumatology. 

LIMITATIONS:

The study’s retrospective design may limit the ability to establish causality between sex differences and IgG4-related disease manifestations. A relatively small percentage of patients were assessed before receiving any immunosuppressive treatment, potentially influencing the observed clinical parameters.

DISCLOSURES:

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Some authors declared financial ties outside this work.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Despite their best efforts, 80% of people who lose weight regain it and many end up heavier within 5 years. Why? Our bodies fight back, revving up hunger while slowing metabolism after weight loss. In ongoing obesity discussions, ghrelin is in the spotlight as the “hunger hormone” playing a crucial role in driving appetite and facilitating weight gain. 

Weight loss interventions, such as diet or gastric bypass surgery, may trigger an increase in ghrelin levels, potentially fueling long-term weight gain. Consequently, ghrelin remains a focal point of research into innovative antiobesity treatments. 

Ghrelin, a hormone produced in the stomach, is often called the “hunger hormone.” Ghrelin is a circulating orexigenic gut hormone with growth hormone–releasing activity. In the intricate balance of energy, central and peripheral peptides such as ghrelin, leptin, adiponectin, and insulin play crucial roles. They regulate hunger, fullness, and metabolic rates, shaping our body weight outcomes. 

Since the discovery of ghrelin, in 1999, research in mice and people has focused on its effect on regulating appetite and implications for long-term weight control. When hunger strikes, ghrelin levels surge, sending signals to the brain that ramp up the appetite. Following a meal, ghrelin decreases, indicating fullness. 

Studies have found that people who were injected with subcutaneous ghrelin experienced a 46% increase in hunger and ate 28% more at their next meal than those who didn’t receive a ghrelin injection.

We might expect high levels of ghrelin in individuals with obesity, but this is not the case. In fact, ghrelin levels are typically lower in individuals with obesity than in leaner individuals. This finding might seem to contradict the idea that obesity is due to high levels of the hunger hormone. 

Excess weight could increase sensitivity to ghrelin, where more receptors lead to higher hunger stimulation with less ghrelin. Beyond hunger, ghrelin can also lead us to eat for comfort, as when stressed or anxious. Ghrelin and synthetic ghrelin mimetics increase body weight and fat mass by activating receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (Müller et al.; Bany Bakar et al.). There, it also activates the brain’s reward pathways, making us crave food even when we are not hungry. This connection between ghrelin and emotional eating can contribute to stress-induced obesity. 

In my clinical practice, I have seen individuals gain maximum weight when they are under more stress and are sleep-deprived. This is because ghrelin levels increased in these scenarios. This elevation of ghrelin in high-stress, low-sleep situations affects weight gain in women during the postpartum period and menopause. 

Evidence also suggests that certain foods affect ghrelin levels. After a person eats carbohydrates, their ghrelin levels initially decrease quickly, but this is followed by a rise in ghrelin, leading them to become hungry again. In contrast, protein intake helps suppress ghrelin levels for longer. Hence, we advise patients to increase protein intake while reducing their carb intake, or to always eat protein along with carbs.

It makes sense that when individuals with obesity lose weight by fasting or caloric restriction and try to maintain that weight loss, their bodies tend to produce more ghrelin. This effect might explain why people who lose weight often find it hard to keep it off: Rising ghrelin levels after weight loss might drive them to eat more and regain weight. 

Two prominent weight loss surgeries, sleeve gastrectomy (SG) and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), have opposite effects on ghrelin levels, reflecting their distinct mechanisms for weight loss. SG involves removal of the gastric fundus, where ghrelin is produced, resulting in a significant decrease in ghrelin levels; RYGB operates through malabsorption without directly affecting ghrelin production. Despite these differing approaches, both techniques demonstrate remarkable weight loss efficacy. Research comparing the two procedures reveals that SG leads to decreased fasting plasma ghrelin levels, whereas RYGB prompts an increase, highlighting the additional appetite-reducing mechanism of SG through ghrelin suppression. This contrast underscores the intricate role of ghrelin in appetite regulation and suggests that its manipulation can significantly influence weight loss outcomes.

With the effect of ghrelin in stimulating appetite being established, other studies have explored the relationship between ghrelin and insulin resistance. A meta-analysis by researchers at Qingdao University, Qingdao, China, found that circulating ghrelin levels were negatively correlated with insulin resistance in individuals with obesity and normal fasting glucose levels. The findings suggest that the role of ghrelin in obesity might extend beyond appetite regulation to influence metabolic pathways and that ghrelin may be a marker for predicting obesity.

Researchers are exploring potential therapeutic targets focusing on ghrelin modulation. Although selective neutralization of ghrelin has not yielded consistent results in rodent models, the interplay between ghrelin and LEAP2— a hormone that attaches to the same brain receptors — could be an area of interest for future obesity treatments.

Could ghrelin be the key to tackling obesity? Blocking ghrelin pharmacologically might be a strategy to keep weight off after weight loss, and it could help prevent the typical rebound effect seen with diets and withdrawal of medications. Considering the high rates of weight regain after diet-induced weight loss and withdrawal of weight loss medications, targeting ghrelin might be the missing link in long-term obesity treatment. It could be a valuable approach to improving long-term outcomes for obesity. However, these blockers might have significant side effects, given that ghrelin affects not only hunger but also the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Therefore, caution will be needed in developing such medications owing to their potential impact on mood and mental health.

With ghrelin playing roles in hunger, reward pathways, and energy regulation, understanding this hormone is crucial in the fight against obesity. Stay tuned for future research that could shed light on the underlying mechanisms at play and hopefully results in clinical action steps.

Dimpi Desai, MD, is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Gerontology, and Metabolism, Stanford University, Stanford, California, and has disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Ashni Dharia, MD, is a resident in the Department of Internal Medicine, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.

Despite their best efforts, 80% of people who lose weight regain it and many end up heavier within 5 years. Why? Our bodies fight back, revving up hunger while slowing metabolism after weight loss. In ongoing obesity discussions, ghrelin is in the spotlight as the “hunger hormone” playing a crucial role in driving appetite and facilitating weight gain. 

Weight loss interventions, such as diet or gastric bypass surgery, may trigger an increase in ghrelin levels, potentially fueling long-term weight gain. Consequently, ghrelin remains a focal point of research into innovative antiobesity treatments. 

Ghrelin, a hormone produced in the stomach, is often called the “hunger hormone.” Ghrelin is a circulating orexigenic gut hormone with growth hormone–releasing activity. In the intricate balance of energy, central and peripheral peptides such as ghrelin, leptin, adiponectin, and insulin play crucial roles. They regulate hunger, fullness, and metabolic rates, shaping our body weight outcomes. 

Since the discovery of ghrelin, in 1999, research in mice and people has focused on its effect on regulating appetite and implications for long-term weight control. When hunger strikes, ghrelin levels surge, sending signals to the brain that ramp up the appetite. Following a meal, ghrelin decreases, indicating fullness. 

Studies have found that people who were injected with subcutaneous ghrelin experienced a 46% increase in hunger and ate 28% more at their next meal than those who didn’t receive a ghrelin injection.

We might expect high levels of ghrelin in individuals with obesity, but this is not the case. In fact, ghrelin levels are typically lower in individuals with obesity than in leaner individuals. This finding might seem to contradict the idea that obesity is due to high levels of the hunger hormone. 

Excess weight could increase sensitivity to ghrelin, where more receptors lead to higher hunger stimulation with less ghrelin. Beyond hunger, ghrelin can also lead us to eat for comfort, as when stressed or anxious. Ghrelin and synthetic ghrelin mimetics increase body weight and fat mass by activating receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (Müller et al.; Bany Bakar et al.). There, it also activates the brain’s reward pathways, making us crave food even when we are not hungry. This connection between ghrelin and emotional eating can contribute to stress-induced obesity. 

In my clinical practice, I have seen individuals gain maximum weight when they are under more stress and are sleep-deprived. This is because ghrelin levels increased in these scenarios. This elevation of ghrelin in high-stress, low-sleep situations affects weight gain in women during the postpartum period and menopause. 

Evidence also suggests that certain foods affect ghrelin levels. After a person eats carbohydrates, their ghrelin levels initially decrease quickly, but this is followed by a rise in ghrelin, leading them to become hungry again. In contrast, protein intake helps suppress ghrelin levels for longer. Hence, we advise patients to increase protein intake while reducing their carb intake, or to always eat protein along with carbs.

It makes sense that when individuals with obesity lose weight by fasting or caloric restriction and try to maintain that weight loss, their bodies tend to produce more ghrelin. This effect might explain why people who lose weight often find it hard to keep it off: Rising ghrelin levels after weight loss might drive them to eat more and regain weight. 

Two prominent weight loss surgeries, sleeve gastrectomy (SG) and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), have opposite effects on ghrelin levels, reflecting their distinct mechanisms for weight loss. SG involves removal of the gastric fundus, where ghrelin is produced, resulting in a significant decrease in ghrelin levels; RYGB operates through malabsorption without directly affecting ghrelin production. Despite these differing approaches, both techniques demonstrate remarkable weight loss efficacy. Research comparing the two procedures reveals that SG leads to decreased fasting plasma ghrelin levels, whereas RYGB prompts an increase, highlighting the additional appetite-reducing mechanism of SG through ghrelin suppression. This contrast underscores the intricate role of ghrelin in appetite regulation and suggests that its manipulation can significantly influence weight loss outcomes.

With the effect of ghrelin in stimulating appetite being established, other studies have explored the relationship between ghrelin and insulin resistance. A meta-analysis by researchers at Qingdao University, Qingdao, China, found that circulating ghrelin levels were negatively correlated with insulin resistance in individuals with obesity and normal fasting glucose levels. The findings suggest that the role of ghrelin in obesity might extend beyond appetite regulation to influence metabolic pathways and that ghrelin may be a marker for predicting obesity.

Researchers are exploring potential therapeutic targets focusing on ghrelin modulation. Although selective neutralization of ghrelin has not yielded consistent results in rodent models, the interplay between ghrelin and LEAP2— a hormone that attaches to the same brain receptors — could be an area of interest for future obesity treatments.

Could ghrelin be the key to tackling obesity? Blocking ghrelin pharmacologically might be a strategy to keep weight off after weight loss, and it could help prevent the typical rebound effect seen with diets and withdrawal of medications. Considering the high rates of weight regain after diet-induced weight loss and withdrawal of weight loss medications, targeting ghrelin might be the missing link in long-term obesity treatment. It could be a valuable approach to improving long-term outcomes for obesity. However, these blockers might have significant side effects, given that ghrelin affects not only hunger but also the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Therefore, caution will be needed in developing such medications owing to their potential impact on mood and mental health.

With ghrelin playing roles in hunger, reward pathways, and energy regulation, understanding this hormone is crucial in the fight against obesity. Stay tuned for future research that could shed light on the underlying mechanisms at play and hopefully results in clinical action steps.

Dimpi Desai, MD, is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Gerontology, and Metabolism, Stanford University, Stanford, California, and has disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Ashni Dharia, MD, is a resident in the Department of Internal Medicine, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.

Despite their best efforts, 80% of people who lose weight regain it and many end up heavier within 5 years. Why? Our bodies fight back, revving up hunger while slowing metabolism after weight loss. In ongoing obesity discussions, ghrelin is in the spotlight as the “hunger hormone” playing a crucial role in driving appetite and facilitating weight gain. 

Weight loss interventions, such as diet or gastric bypass surgery, may trigger an increase in ghrelin levels, potentially fueling long-term weight gain. Consequently, ghrelin remains a focal point of research into innovative antiobesity treatments. 

Ghrelin, a hormone produced in the stomach, is often called the “hunger hormone.” Ghrelin is a circulating orexigenic gut hormone with growth hormone–releasing activity. In the intricate balance of energy, central and peripheral peptides such as ghrelin, leptin, adiponectin, and insulin play crucial roles. They regulate hunger, fullness, and metabolic rates, shaping our body weight outcomes. 

Since the discovery of ghrelin, in 1999, research in mice and people has focused on its effect on regulating appetite and implications for long-term weight control. When hunger strikes, ghrelin levels surge, sending signals to the brain that ramp up the appetite. Following a meal, ghrelin decreases, indicating fullness. 

Studies have found that people who were injected with subcutaneous ghrelin experienced a 46% increase in hunger and ate 28% more at their next meal than those who didn’t receive a ghrelin injection.

We might expect high levels of ghrelin in individuals with obesity, but this is not the case. In fact, ghrelin levels are typically lower in individuals with obesity than in leaner individuals. This finding might seem to contradict the idea that obesity is due to high levels of the hunger hormone. 

Excess weight could increase sensitivity to ghrelin, where more receptors lead to higher hunger stimulation with less ghrelin. Beyond hunger, ghrelin can also lead us to eat for comfort, as when stressed or anxious. Ghrelin and synthetic ghrelin mimetics increase body weight and fat mass by activating receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (Müller et al.; Bany Bakar et al.). There, it also activates the brain’s reward pathways, making us crave food even when we are not hungry. This connection between ghrelin and emotional eating can contribute to stress-induced obesity. 

In my clinical practice, I have seen individuals gain maximum weight when they are under more stress and are sleep-deprived. This is because ghrelin levels increased in these scenarios. This elevation of ghrelin in high-stress, low-sleep situations affects weight gain in women during the postpartum period and menopause. 

Evidence also suggests that certain foods affect ghrelin levels. After a person eats carbohydrates, their ghrelin levels initially decrease quickly, but this is followed by a rise in ghrelin, leading them to become hungry again. In contrast, protein intake helps suppress ghrelin levels for longer. Hence, we advise patients to increase protein intake while reducing their carb intake, or to always eat protein along with carbs.

It makes sense that when individuals with obesity lose weight by fasting or caloric restriction and try to maintain that weight loss, their bodies tend to produce more ghrelin. This effect might explain why people who lose weight often find it hard to keep it off: Rising ghrelin levels after weight loss might drive them to eat more and regain weight. 

Two prominent weight loss surgeries, sleeve gastrectomy (SG) and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), have opposite effects on ghrelin levels, reflecting their distinct mechanisms for weight loss. SG involves removal of the gastric fundus, where ghrelin is produced, resulting in a significant decrease in ghrelin levels; RYGB operates through malabsorption without directly affecting ghrelin production. Despite these differing approaches, both techniques demonstrate remarkable weight loss efficacy. Research comparing the two procedures reveals that SG leads to decreased fasting plasma ghrelin levels, whereas RYGB prompts an increase, highlighting the additional appetite-reducing mechanism of SG through ghrelin suppression. This contrast underscores the intricate role of ghrelin in appetite regulation and suggests that its manipulation can significantly influence weight loss outcomes.

With the effect of ghrelin in stimulating appetite being established, other studies have explored the relationship between ghrelin and insulin resistance. A meta-analysis by researchers at Qingdao University, Qingdao, China, found that circulating ghrelin levels were negatively correlated with insulin resistance in individuals with obesity and normal fasting glucose levels. The findings suggest that the role of ghrelin in obesity might extend beyond appetite regulation to influence metabolic pathways and that ghrelin may be a marker for predicting obesity.

Researchers are exploring potential therapeutic targets focusing on ghrelin modulation. Although selective neutralization of ghrelin has not yielded consistent results in rodent models, the interplay between ghrelin and LEAP2— a hormone that attaches to the same brain receptors — could be an area of interest for future obesity treatments.

Could ghrelin be the key to tackling obesity? Blocking ghrelin pharmacologically might be a strategy to keep weight off after weight loss, and it could help prevent the typical rebound effect seen with diets and withdrawal of medications. Considering the high rates of weight regain after diet-induced weight loss and withdrawal of weight loss medications, targeting ghrelin might be the missing link in long-term obesity treatment. It could be a valuable approach to improving long-term outcomes for obesity. However, these blockers might have significant side effects, given that ghrelin affects not only hunger but also the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Therefore, caution will be needed in developing such medications owing to their potential impact on mood and mental health.

With ghrelin playing roles in hunger, reward pathways, and energy regulation, understanding this hormone is crucial in the fight against obesity. Stay tuned for future research that could shed light on the underlying mechanisms at play and hopefully results in clinical action steps.

Dimpi Desai, MD, is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Gerontology, and Metabolism, Stanford University, Stanford, California, and has disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Ashni Dharia, MD, is a resident in the Department of Internal Medicine, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.

ORLANDO, FLA. — The diabetes and weight loss drug tirzepatide (Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes; Zepbound for obesity) was so effective at reducing sleep disruptions in patients with obesity and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that 40%-50% no longer needed to use a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, according to two new studies.

Tirzepatide, a long-acting glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, also lowered C-reactive protein levels and systolic blood pressure. And patients taking the medication lost 18%-20% of their body weight. 

The SURMOUNT-OSA studies “mark a significant milestone in the treatment of OSA, offering a promising new therapeutic option that addresses both respiratory and metabolic complications,” said lead author Atul Malhotra, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and director of sleep medicine at UC San Diego Health. 

The two double-blind, randomized, controlled trials in patients with obesity and moderate to severe OSA were conducted at 60 sites in nine countries. The results were presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 84th Scientific Sessions and simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

OSA affects 1 billion people worldwide and 30 million American adults, many of whom are undiagnosed. Obesity is a common risk factor. According to the ADA, 40% of those with obesity have OSA and 70% of those with OSA have obesity. 

CPAP is an effective and the most-used intervention for OSA, but many patients refuse to use the device, stop using it, or cannot use it. Should tirzepatide eventually gain Food and Drug Administration approval for OSA, it would be the first drug approved for the condition.

“This new drug treatment offers a more accessible alternative for individuals who cannot tolerate or adhere to existing therapies,” said Dr. Malhotra.
 

Huge Reduction in Episodes, Severity

For the two studies, patients were enrolled who had moderate to severe OSA, defined as more than 15 events per hour (using the apnea-hypopnea index [AHI]) and a body mass index of 30 kg/m² or greater. Those not using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 1, and those using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 2. 

Participants received either the maximum tolerated dose of tirzepatide (10 or 15 mg by once-weekly injection) or placebo for 1 year. In study 1, 114 individuals received tirzepatide and 120 received placebo. For study 2, 119 patients received tirzepatide and 114 received placebo. All participants received regular lifestyle counseling sessions about nutrition and were instructed to reduce food intake by 500 kcal/day and to engage in at least 150 min/week of physical activity.

Enrollment was limited to 70% men to ensure adequate representation of women.

At baseline, 65%-70% of participants had severe OSA, with more than 30 events/hour on the AHI scale and a mean of 51.5 events/hour.

By 1 year, patients taking tirzepatide had 27-30 fewer events/hour, compared with 4-6 fewer events/hour for those taking placebo.

Up to half of those who received tirzepatide in both trials had less than 5 events/hour or 5-14 AHI events/hour and an Epworth Sleepiness Scale score of 10 or less. Those thresholds “represent a level at which CPAP therapy may not be recommended,” wrote the authors.

Patients in the tirzepatide group also had a decrease in systolic blood pressure from baseline of 9.7 mm Hg in study 1 and 7.6 mm Hg in study 2 at week 48.

The most common adverse events were diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which occurred in approximately a quarter of patients taking tirzepatide. There were two adjudicated-confirmed cases of acute pancreatitis in those taking tirzepatide in study 2. 

Patients who received tirzepatide also reported fewer daytime and nighttime disturbances, as measured using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Short Form scale for Sleep-Related Impairment and Sleep Disturbance.
 

Tirzepatide Plus CPAP Are Best

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Sanjay R. Patel, MD, noted that, although clinical guidelines have recommended that weight loss strategies be incorporated as part of OSA treatment, “the integration of obesity management into the approaches to care for obstructive sleep apnea has lagged.”

As many as half of patients abandon CPAP therapy within 3 years, wrote Dr. Patel, who is professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and medical director of the UPMC Comprehensive Sleep Disorders program. “An effective medication to treat obesity is thus an obvious avenue to pursue.”

Dr. Patel noted the large reductions in the number of events on the AHI scale. He wrote that the improvement in systolic blood pressure “was substantially larger than effects seen with CPAP therapy alone and indicate that tirzepatide may be an attractive option for those patients who seek to reduce their cardiovascular risk.”

Dr. Patel raised concerns about whether patients outside of a trial would stick with therapy, noting studies have shown high rates of discontinuation of GLP-1 receptor agonists.

And, he wrote, “racial disparities in the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists among patients with diabetes arouse concern that the addition of tirzepatide as a treatment option for obstructive sleep apnea without directly addressing policies relative to coverage of care will only further exacerbate already pervasive disparities in clinical care for obstructive sleep apnea.”

Commenting on the study during the presentation of the results, Louis Aronne, MD, said he believes the trials demonstrate “the treatment of obesity with tirzepatide plus CPAP is really the optimal treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and obesity-related cardiometabolic risks.” Dr. Aronne is the Sanford I. Weill professor of metabolic research at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City.

Dr. Aronne added there is still much to learn. It is still not clear whether tirzepatide had an independent effect in the OSA trial — as has been seen in other studies where the drug clearly reduced cardiovascular risk — or whether the positive results were primarily caused by weight loss.

“I believe that over time we’ll see that this particular effect in sleep apnea is related to weight,” he said. 

The study was supported by Eli Lilly. Dr. Malhotra has reported being a paid consultant for Lilly and ZOLL Medical and a cofounder of Healcisio. 

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
 

ORLANDO, FLA. — The diabetes and weight loss drug tirzepatide (Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes; Zepbound for obesity) was so effective at reducing sleep disruptions in patients with obesity and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that 40%-50% no longer needed to use a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, according to two new studies.

Tirzepatide, a long-acting glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, also lowered C-reactive protein levels and systolic blood pressure. And patients taking the medication lost 18%-20% of their body weight. 

The SURMOUNT-OSA studies “mark a significant milestone in the treatment of OSA, offering a promising new therapeutic option that addresses both respiratory and metabolic complications,” said lead author Atul Malhotra, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and director of sleep medicine at UC San Diego Health. 

The two double-blind, randomized, controlled trials in patients with obesity and moderate to severe OSA were conducted at 60 sites in nine countries. The results were presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 84th Scientific Sessions and simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

OSA affects 1 billion people worldwide and 30 million American adults, many of whom are undiagnosed. Obesity is a common risk factor. According to the ADA, 40% of those with obesity have OSA and 70% of those with OSA have obesity. 

CPAP is an effective and the most-used intervention for OSA, but many patients refuse to use the device, stop using it, or cannot use it. Should tirzepatide eventually gain Food and Drug Administration approval for OSA, it would be the first drug approved for the condition.

“This new drug treatment offers a more accessible alternative for individuals who cannot tolerate or adhere to existing therapies,” said Dr. Malhotra.
 

Huge Reduction in Episodes, Severity

For the two studies, patients were enrolled who had moderate to severe OSA, defined as more than 15 events per hour (using the apnea-hypopnea index [AHI]) and a body mass index of 30 kg/m² or greater. Those not using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 1, and those using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 2. 

Participants received either the maximum tolerated dose of tirzepatide (10 or 15 mg by once-weekly injection) or placebo for 1 year. In study 1, 114 individuals received tirzepatide and 120 received placebo. For study 2, 119 patients received tirzepatide and 114 received placebo. All participants received regular lifestyle counseling sessions about nutrition and were instructed to reduce food intake by 500 kcal/day and to engage in at least 150 min/week of physical activity.

Enrollment was limited to 70% men to ensure adequate representation of women.

At baseline, 65%-70% of participants had severe OSA, with more than 30 events/hour on the AHI scale and a mean of 51.5 events/hour.

By 1 year, patients taking tirzepatide had 27-30 fewer events/hour, compared with 4-6 fewer events/hour for those taking placebo.

Up to half of those who received tirzepatide in both trials had less than 5 events/hour or 5-14 AHI events/hour and an Epworth Sleepiness Scale score of 10 or less. Those thresholds “represent a level at which CPAP therapy may not be recommended,” wrote the authors.

Patients in the tirzepatide group also had a decrease in systolic blood pressure from baseline of 9.7 mm Hg in study 1 and 7.6 mm Hg in study 2 at week 48.

The most common adverse events were diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which occurred in approximately a quarter of patients taking tirzepatide. There were two adjudicated-confirmed cases of acute pancreatitis in those taking tirzepatide in study 2. 

Patients who received tirzepatide also reported fewer daytime and nighttime disturbances, as measured using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Short Form scale for Sleep-Related Impairment and Sleep Disturbance.
 

Tirzepatide Plus CPAP Are Best

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Sanjay R. Patel, MD, noted that, although clinical guidelines have recommended that weight loss strategies be incorporated as part of OSA treatment, “the integration of obesity management into the approaches to care for obstructive sleep apnea has lagged.”

As many as half of patients abandon CPAP therapy within 3 years, wrote Dr. Patel, who is professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and medical director of the UPMC Comprehensive Sleep Disorders program. “An effective medication to treat obesity is thus an obvious avenue to pursue.”

Dr. Patel noted the large reductions in the number of events on the AHI scale. He wrote that the improvement in systolic blood pressure “was substantially larger than effects seen with CPAP therapy alone and indicate that tirzepatide may be an attractive option for those patients who seek to reduce their cardiovascular risk.”

Dr. Patel raised concerns about whether patients outside of a trial would stick with therapy, noting studies have shown high rates of discontinuation of GLP-1 receptor agonists.

And, he wrote, “racial disparities in the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists among patients with diabetes arouse concern that the addition of tirzepatide as a treatment option for obstructive sleep apnea without directly addressing policies relative to coverage of care will only further exacerbate already pervasive disparities in clinical care for obstructive sleep apnea.”

Commenting on the study during the presentation of the results, Louis Aronne, MD, said he believes the trials demonstrate “the treatment of obesity with tirzepatide plus CPAP is really the optimal treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and obesity-related cardiometabolic risks.” Dr. Aronne is the Sanford I. Weill professor of metabolic research at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City.

Dr. Aronne added there is still much to learn. It is still not clear whether tirzepatide had an independent effect in the OSA trial — as has been seen in other studies where the drug clearly reduced cardiovascular risk — or whether the positive results were primarily caused by weight loss.

“I believe that over time we’ll see that this particular effect in sleep apnea is related to weight,” he said. 

The study was supported by Eli Lilly. Dr. Malhotra has reported being a paid consultant for Lilly and ZOLL Medical and a cofounder of Healcisio. 

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
 

ORLANDO, FLA. — The diabetes and weight loss drug tirzepatide (Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes; Zepbound for obesity) was so effective at reducing sleep disruptions in patients with obesity and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that 40%-50% no longer needed to use a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, according to two new studies.

Tirzepatide, a long-acting glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, also lowered C-reactive protein levels and systolic blood pressure. And patients taking the medication lost 18%-20% of their body weight. 

The SURMOUNT-OSA studies “mark a significant milestone in the treatment of OSA, offering a promising new therapeutic option that addresses both respiratory and metabolic complications,” said lead author Atul Malhotra, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and director of sleep medicine at UC San Diego Health. 

The two double-blind, randomized, controlled trials in patients with obesity and moderate to severe OSA were conducted at 60 sites in nine countries. The results were presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 84th Scientific Sessions and simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

OSA affects 1 billion people worldwide and 30 million American adults, many of whom are undiagnosed. Obesity is a common risk factor. According to the ADA, 40% of those with obesity have OSA and 70% of those with OSA have obesity. 

CPAP is an effective and the most-used intervention for OSA, but many patients refuse to use the device, stop using it, or cannot use it. Should tirzepatide eventually gain Food and Drug Administration approval for OSA, it would be the first drug approved for the condition.

“This new drug treatment offers a more accessible alternative for individuals who cannot tolerate or adhere to existing therapies,” said Dr. Malhotra.
 

Huge Reduction in Episodes, Severity

For the two studies, patients were enrolled who had moderate to severe OSA, defined as more than 15 events per hour (using the apnea-hypopnea index [AHI]) and a body mass index of 30 kg/m² or greater. Those not using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 1, and those using a CPAP device were enrolled in study 2. 

Participants received either the maximum tolerated dose of tirzepatide (10 or 15 mg by once-weekly injection) or placebo for 1 year. In study 1, 114 individuals received tirzepatide and 120 received placebo. For study 2, 119 patients received tirzepatide and 114 received placebo. All participants received regular lifestyle counseling sessions about nutrition and were instructed to reduce food intake by 500 kcal/day and to engage in at least 150 min/week of physical activity.

Enrollment was limited to 70% men to ensure adequate representation of women.

At baseline, 65%-70% of participants had severe OSA, with more than 30 events/hour on the AHI scale and a mean of 51.5 events/hour.

By 1 year, patients taking tirzepatide had 27-30 fewer events/hour, compared with 4-6 fewer events/hour for those taking placebo.

Up to half of those who received tirzepatide in both trials had less than 5 events/hour or 5-14 AHI events/hour and an Epworth Sleepiness Scale score of 10 or less. Those thresholds “represent a level at which CPAP therapy may not be recommended,” wrote the authors.

Patients in the tirzepatide group also had a decrease in systolic blood pressure from baseline of 9.7 mm Hg in study 1 and 7.6 mm Hg in study 2 at week 48.

The most common adverse events were diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which occurred in approximately a quarter of patients taking tirzepatide. There were two adjudicated-confirmed cases of acute pancreatitis in those taking tirzepatide in study 2. 

Patients who received tirzepatide also reported fewer daytime and nighttime disturbances, as measured using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Short Form scale for Sleep-Related Impairment and Sleep Disturbance.
 

Tirzepatide Plus CPAP Are Best

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Sanjay R. Patel, MD, noted that, although clinical guidelines have recommended that weight loss strategies be incorporated as part of OSA treatment, “the integration of obesity management into the approaches to care for obstructive sleep apnea has lagged.”

As many as half of patients abandon CPAP therapy within 3 years, wrote Dr. Patel, who is professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and medical director of the UPMC Comprehensive Sleep Disorders program. “An effective medication to treat obesity is thus an obvious avenue to pursue.”

Dr. Patel noted the large reductions in the number of events on the AHI scale. He wrote that the improvement in systolic blood pressure “was substantially larger than effects seen with CPAP therapy alone and indicate that tirzepatide may be an attractive option for those patients who seek to reduce their cardiovascular risk.”

Dr. Patel raised concerns about whether patients outside of a trial would stick with therapy, noting studies have shown high rates of discontinuation of GLP-1 receptor agonists.

And, he wrote, “racial disparities in the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists among patients with diabetes arouse concern that the addition of tirzepatide as a treatment option for obstructive sleep apnea without directly addressing policies relative to coverage of care will only further exacerbate already pervasive disparities in clinical care for obstructive sleep apnea.”

Commenting on the study during the presentation of the results, Louis Aronne, MD, said he believes the trials demonstrate “the treatment of obesity with tirzepatide plus CPAP is really the optimal treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and obesity-related cardiometabolic risks.” Dr. Aronne is the Sanford I. Weill professor of metabolic research at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City.

Dr. Aronne added there is still much to learn. It is still not clear whether tirzepatide had an independent effect in the OSA trial — as has been seen in other studies where the drug clearly reduced cardiovascular risk — or whether the positive results were primarily caused by weight loss.

“I believe that over time we’ll see that this particular effect in sleep apnea is related to weight,” he said. 

The study was supported by Eli Lilly. Dr. Malhotra has reported being a paid consultant for Lilly and ZOLL Medical and a cofounder of Healcisio. 

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
 

While Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are marketed as providing more generous benefits than traditional Medicare (TM), differences in the financial burden between beneficiaries switching to MA and staying with TM, are minimal, a longitudinal cohort analysis found.

In fact, according to a study by Sungchul Park, PhD, a health economist at Korea University in Seoul, and colleagues, the estimated annual out-of-pocket spending when switching to MA was $168 higher than staying in TM. That amounted to a 10.5% relative increase based on baseline out-of-pocket spending of $1597 annually among switchers, ranging widely, however, from a $133 decrease to a $469 increase. And for some, MA enrollment was associated with a higher likelihood of catastrophic financial burden.

“Our findings contrast with the notion that MA’s apparently more generous health insurance benefits lead to financial savings for enrollees,” Dr. Park and associates wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.
 

The study

The analysis looked at costs for 7054 TM stayers and 1544 TM-to-MA switchers from the 2014-2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, focusing on a cohort in which 18% of TM-covered individuals in year 1 switched to MA in year 2.

Comparative financial outcome measures included individual healthcare costs (out-of-pocket spending/cost sharing), financial burden (high/catastrophic), and subjective financial hardship (difficulty paying medical bills).

Although the overall out-of-pocket differences for MA were minimal and amounted to less than 1% of total healthcare expenses, MA was associated with a greater financial burden in vulnerable, especially in low-income populations. For every 100 beneficiaries with family incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, one to six more switchers faced a catastrophic financial burden, with their out-of-pocket costs consuming more than 40% of household income in the year after switching.

The gap between the perception of lower costs and reality may be caused by a substantially heavier cost-sharing burden for certain services in MA plans, Dr. Park and associates pointed out. While MA enrollees generally paid less in some studies than the Part A hospital deductible for TM for inpatient stays of 3 days, they were more likely to face higher cost sharing for stays exceeding 7 days

Furthermore, whereas TM covers home health services without cost sharing, some MA plans have copayments. In addition, out-of-network health services can cost more. MA enrollees paid an average of $9 more for mental health services than for other in-network services and often encountered limited access to in-network providers. According to a 2021 study, only 18.2% of mental health professionals, 34.4% of cardiologists, 50.0% of psychiatrists, and 57.9% of primary care providers were included in MA networks,

An accompanying editorial noted that private MA plans will reap $83 billion in overpayments from U.S. taxpayers this year, according to Congress’s Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

And as the data from Dr. Park and colleagues reveal, switchers don’t get much financial protection, according to primary care physician and healthcare researcher Steffi J. Woolhandler, MD, MPH, and internist David U. Himmelstein, MD, both of City University of New York at Hunter College in New York City.

“Medicare Advantage looks good when you’re healthy and don’t need much care. But when you need coverage, it often fails, leaving you with big bills and narrow choices for care,” Dr. Woolhandler said in an interview.

So how do these findings square with insurers’ hard-sell claims and enrollees’ perceptions that MA cuts out-of-pocket costs? “The likeliest explanation is that MA insurers have structured their benefits to advantage low-cost (that is, profitable) enrollees and disadvantage those requiring expensive care,” the editorial commentators wrote. For beneficiaries on inexpensive medications, MA plans would be a financial win. “But for patients requiring expensive chemotherapies, the 20% coinsurance that most MA plans charge could be financially ruinous.”

Commenting on the study but not involved in it, David A. Lipschutz, JD, LLB, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Washington, DC, called the study an important one that provides more evidence that significant overpayments to MA plans don’t translate to better financial protections for plan enrollees, particularly lower-income individuals. “While there has been some recent movement to hold plans more accountable for providing necessary care, much more impactful action by policymakers is required to mitigate the harms of the growing privatization of the Medicare program,” he said. “MA overpayments could be redistributed to traditional Medicare in order to enrich all Medicare beneficiaries instead of just insurance companies.”

This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Dr. Park disclosed no competing interests. One study coauthor reported support from government and not-for-profit research-funding bodies. Editorialists Dr. Woolhandler and Dr. Himmelstein had no competing interests to declare. Dr. Lipschutz disclosed Medicare advocacy work.

While Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are marketed as providing more generous benefits than traditional Medicare (TM), differences in the financial burden between beneficiaries switching to MA and staying with TM, are minimal, a longitudinal cohort analysis found.

In fact, according to a study by Sungchul Park, PhD, a health economist at Korea University in Seoul, and colleagues, the estimated annual out-of-pocket spending when switching to MA was $168 higher than staying in TM. That amounted to a 10.5% relative increase based on baseline out-of-pocket spending of $1597 annually among switchers, ranging widely, however, from a $133 decrease to a $469 increase. And for some, MA enrollment was associated with a higher likelihood of catastrophic financial burden.

“Our findings contrast with the notion that MA’s apparently more generous health insurance benefits lead to financial savings for enrollees,” Dr. Park and associates wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.
 

The study

The analysis looked at costs for 7054 TM stayers and 1544 TM-to-MA switchers from the 2014-2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, focusing on a cohort in which 18% of TM-covered individuals in year 1 switched to MA in year 2.

Comparative financial outcome measures included individual healthcare costs (out-of-pocket spending/cost sharing), financial burden (high/catastrophic), and subjective financial hardship (difficulty paying medical bills).

Although the overall out-of-pocket differences for MA were minimal and amounted to less than 1% of total healthcare expenses, MA was associated with a greater financial burden in vulnerable, especially in low-income populations. For every 100 beneficiaries with family incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, one to six more switchers faced a catastrophic financial burden, with their out-of-pocket costs consuming more than 40% of household income in the year after switching.

The gap between the perception of lower costs and reality may be caused by a substantially heavier cost-sharing burden for certain services in MA plans, Dr. Park and associates pointed out. While MA enrollees generally paid less in some studies than the Part A hospital deductible for TM for inpatient stays of 3 days, they were more likely to face higher cost sharing for stays exceeding 7 days

Furthermore, whereas TM covers home health services without cost sharing, some MA plans have copayments. In addition, out-of-network health services can cost more. MA enrollees paid an average of $9 more for mental health services than for other in-network services and often encountered limited access to in-network providers. According to a 2021 study, only 18.2% of mental health professionals, 34.4% of cardiologists, 50.0% of psychiatrists, and 57.9% of primary care providers were included in MA networks,

An accompanying editorial noted that private MA plans will reap $83 billion in overpayments from U.S. taxpayers this year, according to Congress’s Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

And as the data from Dr. Park and colleagues reveal, switchers don’t get much financial protection, according to primary care physician and healthcare researcher Steffi J. Woolhandler, MD, MPH, and internist David U. Himmelstein, MD, both of City University of New York at Hunter College in New York City.

“Medicare Advantage looks good when you’re healthy and don’t need much care. But when you need coverage, it often fails, leaving you with big bills and narrow choices for care,” Dr. Woolhandler said in an interview.

So how do these findings square with insurers’ hard-sell claims and enrollees’ perceptions that MA cuts out-of-pocket costs? “The likeliest explanation is that MA insurers have structured their benefits to advantage low-cost (that is, profitable) enrollees and disadvantage those requiring expensive care,” the editorial commentators wrote. For beneficiaries on inexpensive medications, MA plans would be a financial win. “But for patients requiring expensive chemotherapies, the 20% coinsurance that most MA plans charge could be financially ruinous.”

Commenting on the study but not involved in it, David A. Lipschutz, JD, LLB, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Washington, DC, called the study an important one that provides more evidence that significant overpayments to MA plans don’t translate to better financial protections for plan enrollees, particularly lower-income individuals. “While there has been some recent movement to hold plans more accountable for providing necessary care, much more impactful action by policymakers is required to mitigate the harms of the growing privatization of the Medicare program,” he said. “MA overpayments could be redistributed to traditional Medicare in order to enrich all Medicare beneficiaries instead of just insurance companies.”

This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Dr. Park disclosed no competing interests. One study coauthor reported support from government and not-for-profit research-funding bodies. Editorialists Dr. Woolhandler and Dr. Himmelstein had no competing interests to declare. Dr. Lipschutz disclosed Medicare advocacy work.

While Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are marketed as providing more generous benefits than traditional Medicare (TM), differences in the financial burden between beneficiaries switching to MA and staying with TM, are minimal, a longitudinal cohort analysis found.

In fact, according to a study by Sungchul Park, PhD, a health economist at Korea University in Seoul, and colleagues, the estimated annual out-of-pocket spending when switching to MA was $168 higher than staying in TM. That amounted to a 10.5% relative increase based on baseline out-of-pocket spending of $1597 annually among switchers, ranging widely, however, from a $133 decrease to a $469 increase. And for some, MA enrollment was associated with a higher likelihood of catastrophic financial burden.

“Our findings contrast with the notion that MA’s apparently more generous health insurance benefits lead to financial savings for enrollees,” Dr. Park and associates wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.
 

The study

The analysis looked at costs for 7054 TM stayers and 1544 TM-to-MA switchers from the 2014-2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, focusing on a cohort in which 18% of TM-covered individuals in year 1 switched to MA in year 2.

Comparative financial outcome measures included individual healthcare costs (out-of-pocket spending/cost sharing), financial burden (high/catastrophic), and subjective financial hardship (difficulty paying medical bills).

Although the overall out-of-pocket differences for MA were minimal and amounted to less than 1% of total healthcare expenses, MA was associated with a greater financial burden in vulnerable, especially in low-income populations. For every 100 beneficiaries with family incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, one to six more switchers faced a catastrophic financial burden, with their out-of-pocket costs consuming more than 40% of household income in the year after switching.

The gap between the perception of lower costs and reality may be caused by a substantially heavier cost-sharing burden for certain services in MA plans, Dr. Park and associates pointed out. While MA enrollees generally paid less in some studies than the Part A hospital deductible for TM for inpatient stays of 3 days, they were more likely to face higher cost sharing for stays exceeding 7 days

Furthermore, whereas TM covers home health services without cost sharing, some MA plans have copayments. In addition, out-of-network health services can cost more. MA enrollees paid an average of $9 more for mental health services than for other in-network services and often encountered limited access to in-network providers. According to a 2021 study, only 18.2% of mental health professionals, 34.4% of cardiologists, 50.0% of psychiatrists, and 57.9% of primary care providers were included in MA networks,

An accompanying editorial noted that private MA plans will reap $83 billion in overpayments from U.S. taxpayers this year, according to Congress’s Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

And as the data from Dr. Park and colleagues reveal, switchers don’t get much financial protection, according to primary care physician and healthcare researcher Steffi J. Woolhandler, MD, MPH, and internist David U. Himmelstein, MD, both of City University of New York at Hunter College in New York City.

“Medicare Advantage looks good when you’re healthy and don’t need much care. But when you need coverage, it often fails, leaving you with big bills and narrow choices for care,” Dr. Woolhandler said in an interview.

So how do these findings square with insurers’ hard-sell claims and enrollees’ perceptions that MA cuts out-of-pocket costs? “The likeliest explanation is that MA insurers have structured their benefits to advantage low-cost (that is, profitable) enrollees and disadvantage those requiring expensive care,” the editorial commentators wrote. For beneficiaries on inexpensive medications, MA plans would be a financial win. “But for patients requiring expensive chemotherapies, the 20% coinsurance that most MA plans charge could be financially ruinous.”

Commenting on the study but not involved in it, David A. Lipschutz, JD, LLB, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Washington, DC, called the study an important one that provides more evidence that significant overpayments to MA plans don’t translate to better financial protections for plan enrollees, particularly lower-income individuals. “While there has been some recent movement to hold plans more accountable for providing necessary care, much more impactful action by policymakers is required to mitigate the harms of the growing privatization of the Medicare program,” he said. “MA overpayments could be redistributed to traditional Medicare in order to enrich all Medicare beneficiaries instead of just insurance companies.”

This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Dr. Park disclosed no competing interests. One study coauthor reported support from government and not-for-profit research-funding bodies. Editorialists Dr. Woolhandler and Dr. Himmelstein had no competing interests to declare. Dr. Lipschutz disclosed Medicare advocacy work.

Some 15%-20% of the world’s population are neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia, Tourette syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and others. With different strengths and challenges around learning, engaging socially, or completing certain tasks, neurodivergent people can face barriers in the workforce.

Meanwhile, studies suggest that neurodivergent people may be overrepresented in STEM fields such as medicine. The medical field may self-select for traits associated with neurodivergent conditions, researchers say, including a hyperfocus on intense interests, pattern recognition, increased curiosity and empathy, and thinking quickly under pressure.

But neurodivergent physicians report difficult, even damaging, experiences in the healthcare field. They struggle with stigma, a culture of nondisclosure, and lack of accommodations, which can lead to burnout and poor mental health.

“The medical system and the mental health system are some of the spaces that are holding on tightly to some of the outdated understandings of things like autism and ADHD,” says Megan Anna Neff, PsyD, a psychologist with autism and ADHD based in Portland, Oregon.

Situations can get dire: A 2023 survey of more than 200 autistic doctors from several countries found that 77% had considered suicide and 24% had attempted it.

But here’s the crux of it: Many neurodivergent doctors believe their unique ways of thinking and outside-the-box creativity are skills and strengths that can benefit the field. And they say making medicine more inclusive — and better understanding how a neurodivergent physician’s brain works — would allow them to thrive.
 

Blending In and Breaking Down

The exact number of neurodivergent physicians in the workforce remains unknown. Existing studies are small and focus mainly on autism. But researchers believe the percentage could be higher than we think, because neurodiversity can be underidentified.

Although autism can sometimes be diagnosed as early as 18 months, it’s not uncommon to receive a diagnosis well into adulthood. “Like many late-identified autistic adults, I got my autism diagnosis in the context of autistic burnout,” says Melissa Houser, MD, a primary care physician who received a diagnosis in 2021. Dr. Houser, who uses the pronouns she/they, explains that her experience is common, “a consequence of chronically having your life’s demands exceed your capacity.”

Dr. Houser, who also has ADHD and dyslexia, among other neurodivergent conditions, says that before her diagnosis, she worked in a traditional practice setting. Eventually, she began to notice intense dysregulation and fatigue. “I began to have a lot more difficulties with communication and my motor planning and sequencing,” Dr. Houser says. “I was sleep-deprived, and my needs were not being met. I was in a situation where I had a complete lack of autonomy over my practice.”

Deep in burnout, Dr. Houser says she lost her ability to “mask,” a term used to describe how some neurodivergent people work to “blend in” with societal expectations. This led to further communication breakdowns with her supervisor. Finally, Dr. Houser saw a psychiatrist.

Shortly after her diagnosis, Dr. Houser quit her job and founded All Brains Belong, a nonprofit that provides neurodiversity-affirming medical care, education, and advocacy. Research has found that people with autism are at increased risk for physical health conditions, including immune conditions, gastrointestinal disorders, metabolic conditions, and increased mortality in hospital settings. Understanding these connections can “mean the difference between life and death” for neurodivergent patients, Dr. Houser says.

Yet, in a 2015 study that assessed providers’ ability to recognize autism, a high proportion were not aware that they had patients with autism spectrum disorder, and most reported lacking both the skills and the tools to care for them.
 

Different as a Doctor and a Patient

Bernadette Grosjean, MD, a retired associate professor of psychiatry at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, also found insight into lifelong experiences as both a doctor and a patient with her autism diagnosis, which came when she was 61.

“Looking back, I was a smart kid but kind of clumsy and different in other ways,” Dr. Grosjean says. According to a 2021 survey by Cambridge University, autistic individuals are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, and Dr. Grosjean, who is gay, says that not being fully accepted by family or friends played a role in her struggles with mental health issues.

Throughout her mental health treatment, Dr. Grosjean felt as though her providers “were expecting from me things that I didn’t know how to do or fix. I didn’t know how to be a ‘good’ patient,” she recalls.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Grosjean started to notice that many of the women she treated for borderline personality disorder, which is categorized by unstable relationships and emotions, were autistic. “I then started asking lots of questions about myself — the fact that I’ve always been very sensitive or that I’ve been accused of being both hypersensitive and not having emotions, and I understood a lot.”

When Dr. Grosjean came across Autistic Doctors International, a group of over 800 autistic doctors worldwide, she says, “I found my tribe.” She now serves as the US lead for psychiatry for the group, which is focused on support, advocacy, research, and education around neurodiversity.

Psychiatric comorbidities can accompany neurodivergent conditions. But a growing body of research, including a 2022 study published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, indicates that autism and ADHD are frequently misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety.

Dr. Neff was unaware of her conditions until one of her children was diagnosed with autism in 2021. She started to research it. “As I was learning about autism and girls, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is me,’ ” Dr. Neff recalls. Within a few weeks, she had her own diagnosis.

In hindsight, Dr. Neff has more clarity regarding her struggles in the traditional medical space. She had found it difficult to fit patients into short appointment windows and keep their notes concise. Although she loved hospital work, the environment had been overwhelming and led to burnout.
 

‘A Deficit-Based Lens’

Dr. Houser believes that too often, autism is viewed through a “deficit-based lens.” Stressors like sensory overload, changes in routine, or unexpected events can exacerbate behavioral challenges for neurodivergent people in the workplace. The DSM-5 criteria for autism, she points out, are largely based on autistic “stress behaviors.”

The result, Dr. Houser says, is that neurodivergent doctors are judged by their response to stressors that put them at a disadvantage rather than their capabilities under more positive circumstances. “The more dysregulated someone is,” she says, “the more likely they are to manifest those observable behaviors.”

Dr. Neff notes that medicine is a very “sensory overwhelming work environment.” Working in ob.gyn. and primary care clinics, she remembers often coming home with a headache and a low-grade fever. “I had no idea why, but I now realize it’s because I was so sensory sick.”

Fearing for her job, Dr. Neff intentionally waited until she was in private practice to disclose her neurodiversity. “I don’t think it would have been received well if I was in a hospital system,” she says. “There’s a lot of invalidation that can come when someone chooses to self-disclose, and their colleagues don’t have a framework in mind to understand.” In one instance, after revealing her diagnosis, she remembers a well-known researcher telling her she wasn’t autistic.
Dr. Grosjean has also had former colleagues invalidate her diagnosis, something she says “keeps people quiet.”
 

Understanding the Neurodivergent Brain

The general lack of education on how neurodivergent brains work, physicians with these conditions say, means they are not often recognized for how they can function with certain accommodations and how they could contribute in unique ways if their workplace challenges were reduced.

“What we know about autistic brains is that we are systems-thinking pattern matchers,” says Dr. Houser, who formed an interdisciplinary task force to explore medical conditions that are more common in autistic people. Through that comprehensive approach, she has worked to find best practices to treat the constellation of conditions that can arise among these patients. “My autistic brain allowed me to do that,” Dr. Houser says.

Catriona McVey, a medical student in the United Kingdom and creator of the blog Attention Deficit Doctor, points out that “ADHD brains are interest-driven; they can be very focused when you’re doing something enjoyable or new due to increased dopaminergic stimulation.” Ms. McVey speaks from personal experience. “I’ve hyperfocused before on an essay that interested me for over 10 hours,” she recalls, “so I imagine if I was interested in surgery, I could easily hyperfocus on a long operation.” 

Empathy is another key part of medical practice. Contrary to stereotypes of neurodivergent people lacking empathy, current research suggests this isn’t true. A concept known as the “double empathy problem,” a term coined by British researcher Damian Milton in 2012, challenges the misconception that autistic people do not have empathy, explains Dr. Grosjean.

Mr. Milton theorized that there are two types of empathy: emotional, when you feel someone else’s pain, and cognitive, which involves critical thinking to understand someone’s emotions or thoughts. “Autistic people have, in general, a lot of emotional empathy,” Dr. Grosjean says, “but the cognitive empathy they don’t have as well.”

Dr. Neff has experienced this in her practice. “I will often feel what my clients are feeling as they’re feeling it,” she says, adding that she has always had an innate ability to analyze and connect with clients. She’s good at observing the interplay of health conditions, incorporating biology, psychology, and social conceptualizations of issues, with nuance. She feels that recognizing behavioral patterns or psychological triggers in her patients helps her see them holistically and provide better care. “That was a skill even before I realized I was autistic, but I always thought it was just intuitive to everyone,” she says. 
 

Support Can Lead to Success

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to neurodivergent employees. However, getting those accommodations involves disclosure, which many physicians have reasons to avoid.

It also means more work. Requesting and putting adjustments in place can take a lot of time and energy to organize. Ms. McVey says they can be “long-winded, multistep tasks” that are not very compatible with ADHD. “Some doctors report that service pressures and funding are used as excuses to refuse adjustments,” she adds. 

Ms. McVey lists several workplace accommodations that could be helpful, including flexible working hours, a quiet space to complete paperwork, dictation software, and extra time for medical students to complete written exams.

Neurodivergent physicians have also called for increased diversity of senior leadership and utilizing “cognitive apprenticeship models,” where employees explain their thought processes and receive timely feedback.

But far too often, there is little intervention until a doctor reaches a crisis point. “I look forward to the day when we don’t have to wait until people are profoundly depleted to discover how their brains work,” says Dr. Houser.

Beyond logistical and structural changes in the medical field, Dr. Grosjean speaks of the simple need to listen to colleagues with an open mind and believe them when they express their feelings and experiences. “Everyone has a role to play in challenging stigma, misconceptions, and stereotypes,” Ms. McVey agrees. Ask yourself the old question, she suggests: “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Some 15%-20% of the world’s population are neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia, Tourette syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and others. With different strengths and challenges around learning, engaging socially, or completing certain tasks, neurodivergent people can face barriers in the workforce.

Meanwhile, studies suggest that neurodivergent people may be overrepresented in STEM fields such as medicine. The medical field may self-select for traits associated with neurodivergent conditions, researchers say, including a hyperfocus on intense interests, pattern recognition, increased curiosity and empathy, and thinking quickly under pressure.

But neurodivergent physicians report difficult, even damaging, experiences in the healthcare field. They struggle with stigma, a culture of nondisclosure, and lack of accommodations, which can lead to burnout and poor mental health.

“The medical system and the mental health system are some of the spaces that are holding on tightly to some of the outdated understandings of things like autism and ADHD,” says Megan Anna Neff, PsyD, a psychologist with autism and ADHD based in Portland, Oregon.

Situations can get dire: A 2023 survey of more than 200 autistic doctors from several countries found that 77% had considered suicide and 24% had attempted it.

But here’s the crux of it: Many neurodivergent doctors believe their unique ways of thinking and outside-the-box creativity are skills and strengths that can benefit the field. And they say making medicine more inclusive — and better understanding how a neurodivergent physician’s brain works — would allow them to thrive.
 

Blending In and Breaking Down

The exact number of neurodivergent physicians in the workforce remains unknown. Existing studies are small and focus mainly on autism. But researchers believe the percentage could be higher than we think, because neurodiversity can be underidentified.

Although autism can sometimes be diagnosed as early as 18 months, it’s not uncommon to receive a diagnosis well into adulthood. “Like many late-identified autistic adults, I got my autism diagnosis in the context of autistic burnout,” says Melissa Houser, MD, a primary care physician who received a diagnosis in 2021. Dr. Houser, who uses the pronouns she/they, explains that her experience is common, “a consequence of chronically having your life’s demands exceed your capacity.”

Dr. Houser, who also has ADHD and dyslexia, among other neurodivergent conditions, says that before her diagnosis, she worked in a traditional practice setting. Eventually, she began to notice intense dysregulation and fatigue. “I began to have a lot more difficulties with communication and my motor planning and sequencing,” Dr. Houser says. “I was sleep-deprived, and my needs were not being met. I was in a situation where I had a complete lack of autonomy over my practice.”

Deep in burnout, Dr. Houser says she lost her ability to “mask,” a term used to describe how some neurodivergent people work to “blend in” with societal expectations. This led to further communication breakdowns with her supervisor. Finally, Dr. Houser saw a psychiatrist.

Shortly after her diagnosis, Dr. Houser quit her job and founded All Brains Belong, a nonprofit that provides neurodiversity-affirming medical care, education, and advocacy. Research has found that people with autism are at increased risk for physical health conditions, including immune conditions, gastrointestinal disorders, metabolic conditions, and increased mortality in hospital settings. Understanding these connections can “mean the difference between life and death” for neurodivergent patients, Dr. Houser says.

Yet, in a 2015 study that assessed providers’ ability to recognize autism, a high proportion were not aware that they had patients with autism spectrum disorder, and most reported lacking both the skills and the tools to care for them.
 

Different as a Doctor and a Patient

Bernadette Grosjean, MD, a retired associate professor of psychiatry at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, also found insight into lifelong experiences as both a doctor and a patient with her autism diagnosis, which came when she was 61.

“Looking back, I was a smart kid but kind of clumsy and different in other ways,” Dr. Grosjean says. According to a 2021 survey by Cambridge University, autistic individuals are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, and Dr. Grosjean, who is gay, says that not being fully accepted by family or friends played a role in her struggles with mental health issues.

Throughout her mental health treatment, Dr. Grosjean felt as though her providers “were expecting from me things that I didn’t know how to do or fix. I didn’t know how to be a ‘good’ patient,” she recalls.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Grosjean started to notice that many of the women she treated for borderline personality disorder, which is categorized by unstable relationships and emotions, were autistic. “I then started asking lots of questions about myself — the fact that I’ve always been very sensitive or that I’ve been accused of being both hypersensitive and not having emotions, and I understood a lot.”

When Dr. Grosjean came across Autistic Doctors International, a group of over 800 autistic doctors worldwide, she says, “I found my tribe.” She now serves as the US lead for psychiatry for the group, which is focused on support, advocacy, research, and education around neurodiversity.

Psychiatric comorbidities can accompany neurodivergent conditions. But a growing body of research, including a 2022 study published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, indicates that autism and ADHD are frequently misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety.

Dr. Neff was unaware of her conditions until one of her children was diagnosed with autism in 2021. She started to research it. “As I was learning about autism and girls, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is me,’ ” Dr. Neff recalls. Within a few weeks, she had her own diagnosis.

In hindsight, Dr. Neff has more clarity regarding her struggles in the traditional medical space. She had found it difficult to fit patients into short appointment windows and keep their notes concise. Although she loved hospital work, the environment had been overwhelming and led to burnout.
 

‘A Deficit-Based Lens’

Dr. Houser believes that too often, autism is viewed through a “deficit-based lens.” Stressors like sensory overload, changes in routine, or unexpected events can exacerbate behavioral challenges for neurodivergent people in the workplace. The DSM-5 criteria for autism, she points out, are largely based on autistic “stress behaviors.”

The result, Dr. Houser says, is that neurodivergent doctors are judged by their response to stressors that put them at a disadvantage rather than their capabilities under more positive circumstances. “The more dysregulated someone is,” she says, “the more likely they are to manifest those observable behaviors.”

Dr. Neff notes that medicine is a very “sensory overwhelming work environment.” Working in ob.gyn. and primary care clinics, she remembers often coming home with a headache and a low-grade fever. “I had no idea why, but I now realize it’s because I was so sensory sick.”

Fearing for her job, Dr. Neff intentionally waited until she was in private practice to disclose her neurodiversity. “I don’t think it would have been received well if I was in a hospital system,” she says. “There’s a lot of invalidation that can come when someone chooses to self-disclose, and their colleagues don’t have a framework in mind to understand.” In one instance, after revealing her diagnosis, she remembers a well-known researcher telling her she wasn’t autistic.
Dr. Grosjean has also had former colleagues invalidate her diagnosis, something she says “keeps people quiet.”
 

Understanding the Neurodivergent Brain

The general lack of education on how neurodivergent brains work, physicians with these conditions say, means they are not often recognized for how they can function with certain accommodations and how they could contribute in unique ways if their workplace challenges were reduced.

“What we know about autistic brains is that we are systems-thinking pattern matchers,” says Dr. Houser, who formed an interdisciplinary task force to explore medical conditions that are more common in autistic people. Through that comprehensive approach, she has worked to find best practices to treat the constellation of conditions that can arise among these patients. “My autistic brain allowed me to do that,” Dr. Houser says.

Catriona McVey, a medical student in the United Kingdom and creator of the blog Attention Deficit Doctor, points out that “ADHD brains are interest-driven; they can be very focused when you’re doing something enjoyable or new due to increased dopaminergic stimulation.” Ms. McVey speaks from personal experience. “I’ve hyperfocused before on an essay that interested me for over 10 hours,” she recalls, “so I imagine if I was interested in surgery, I could easily hyperfocus on a long operation.” 

Empathy is another key part of medical practice. Contrary to stereotypes of neurodivergent people lacking empathy, current research suggests this isn’t true. A concept known as the “double empathy problem,” a term coined by British researcher Damian Milton in 2012, challenges the misconception that autistic people do not have empathy, explains Dr. Grosjean.

Mr. Milton theorized that there are two types of empathy: emotional, when you feel someone else’s pain, and cognitive, which involves critical thinking to understand someone’s emotions or thoughts. “Autistic people have, in general, a lot of emotional empathy,” Dr. Grosjean says, “but the cognitive empathy they don’t have as well.”

Dr. Neff has experienced this in her practice. “I will often feel what my clients are feeling as they’re feeling it,” she says, adding that she has always had an innate ability to analyze and connect with clients. She’s good at observing the interplay of health conditions, incorporating biology, psychology, and social conceptualizations of issues, with nuance. She feels that recognizing behavioral patterns or psychological triggers in her patients helps her see them holistically and provide better care. “That was a skill even before I realized I was autistic, but I always thought it was just intuitive to everyone,” she says. 
 

Support Can Lead to Success

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to neurodivergent employees. However, getting those accommodations involves disclosure, which many physicians have reasons to avoid.

It also means more work. Requesting and putting adjustments in place can take a lot of time and energy to organize. Ms. McVey says they can be “long-winded, multistep tasks” that are not very compatible with ADHD. “Some doctors report that service pressures and funding are used as excuses to refuse adjustments,” she adds. 

Ms. McVey lists several workplace accommodations that could be helpful, including flexible working hours, a quiet space to complete paperwork, dictation software, and extra time for medical students to complete written exams.

Neurodivergent physicians have also called for increased diversity of senior leadership and utilizing “cognitive apprenticeship models,” where employees explain their thought processes and receive timely feedback.

But far too often, there is little intervention until a doctor reaches a crisis point. “I look forward to the day when we don’t have to wait until people are profoundly depleted to discover how their brains work,” says Dr. Houser.

Beyond logistical and structural changes in the medical field, Dr. Grosjean speaks of the simple need to listen to colleagues with an open mind and believe them when they express their feelings and experiences. “Everyone has a role to play in challenging stigma, misconceptions, and stereotypes,” Ms. McVey agrees. Ask yourself the old question, she suggests: “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Some 15%-20% of the world’s population are neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia, Tourette syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and others. With different strengths and challenges around learning, engaging socially, or completing certain tasks, neurodivergent people can face barriers in the workforce.

Meanwhile, studies suggest that neurodivergent people may be overrepresented in STEM fields such as medicine. The medical field may self-select for traits associated with neurodivergent conditions, researchers say, including a hyperfocus on intense interests, pattern recognition, increased curiosity and empathy, and thinking quickly under pressure.

But neurodivergent physicians report difficult, even damaging, experiences in the healthcare field. They struggle with stigma, a culture of nondisclosure, and lack of accommodations, which can lead to burnout and poor mental health.

“The medical system and the mental health system are some of the spaces that are holding on tightly to some of the outdated understandings of things like autism and ADHD,” says Megan Anna Neff, PsyD, a psychologist with autism and ADHD based in Portland, Oregon.

Situations can get dire: A 2023 survey of more than 200 autistic doctors from several countries found that 77% had considered suicide and 24% had attempted it.

But here’s the crux of it: Many neurodivergent doctors believe their unique ways of thinking and outside-the-box creativity are skills and strengths that can benefit the field. And they say making medicine more inclusive — and better understanding how a neurodivergent physician’s brain works — would allow them to thrive.
 

Blending In and Breaking Down

The exact number of neurodivergent physicians in the workforce remains unknown. Existing studies are small and focus mainly on autism. But researchers believe the percentage could be higher than we think, because neurodiversity can be underidentified.

Although autism can sometimes be diagnosed as early as 18 months, it’s not uncommon to receive a diagnosis well into adulthood. “Like many late-identified autistic adults, I got my autism diagnosis in the context of autistic burnout,” says Melissa Houser, MD, a primary care physician who received a diagnosis in 2021. Dr. Houser, who uses the pronouns she/they, explains that her experience is common, “a consequence of chronically having your life’s demands exceed your capacity.”

Dr. Houser, who also has ADHD and dyslexia, among other neurodivergent conditions, says that before her diagnosis, she worked in a traditional practice setting. Eventually, she began to notice intense dysregulation and fatigue. “I began to have a lot more difficulties with communication and my motor planning and sequencing,” Dr. Houser says. “I was sleep-deprived, and my needs were not being met. I was in a situation where I had a complete lack of autonomy over my practice.”

Deep in burnout, Dr. Houser says she lost her ability to “mask,” a term used to describe how some neurodivergent people work to “blend in” with societal expectations. This led to further communication breakdowns with her supervisor. Finally, Dr. Houser saw a psychiatrist.

Shortly after her diagnosis, Dr. Houser quit her job and founded All Brains Belong, a nonprofit that provides neurodiversity-affirming medical care, education, and advocacy. Research has found that people with autism are at increased risk for physical health conditions, including immune conditions, gastrointestinal disorders, metabolic conditions, and increased mortality in hospital settings. Understanding these connections can “mean the difference between life and death” for neurodivergent patients, Dr. Houser says.

Yet, in a 2015 study that assessed providers’ ability to recognize autism, a high proportion were not aware that they had patients with autism spectrum disorder, and most reported lacking both the skills and the tools to care for them.
 

Different as a Doctor and a Patient

Bernadette Grosjean, MD, a retired associate professor of psychiatry at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, also found insight into lifelong experiences as both a doctor and a patient with her autism diagnosis, which came when she was 61.

“Looking back, I was a smart kid but kind of clumsy and different in other ways,” Dr. Grosjean says. According to a 2021 survey by Cambridge University, autistic individuals are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, and Dr. Grosjean, who is gay, says that not being fully accepted by family or friends played a role in her struggles with mental health issues.

Throughout her mental health treatment, Dr. Grosjean felt as though her providers “were expecting from me things that I didn’t know how to do or fix. I didn’t know how to be a ‘good’ patient,” she recalls.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Grosjean started to notice that many of the women she treated for borderline personality disorder, which is categorized by unstable relationships and emotions, were autistic. “I then started asking lots of questions about myself — the fact that I’ve always been very sensitive or that I’ve been accused of being both hypersensitive and not having emotions, and I understood a lot.”

When Dr. Grosjean came across Autistic Doctors International, a group of over 800 autistic doctors worldwide, she says, “I found my tribe.” She now serves as the US lead for psychiatry for the group, which is focused on support, advocacy, research, and education around neurodiversity.

Psychiatric comorbidities can accompany neurodivergent conditions. But a growing body of research, including a 2022 study published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, indicates that autism and ADHD are frequently misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety.

Dr. Neff was unaware of her conditions until one of her children was diagnosed with autism in 2021. She started to research it. “As I was learning about autism and girls, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is me,’ ” Dr. Neff recalls. Within a few weeks, she had her own diagnosis.

In hindsight, Dr. Neff has more clarity regarding her struggles in the traditional medical space. She had found it difficult to fit patients into short appointment windows and keep their notes concise. Although she loved hospital work, the environment had been overwhelming and led to burnout.
 

‘A Deficit-Based Lens’

Dr. Houser believes that too often, autism is viewed through a “deficit-based lens.” Stressors like sensory overload, changes in routine, or unexpected events can exacerbate behavioral challenges for neurodivergent people in the workplace. The DSM-5 criteria for autism, she points out, are largely based on autistic “stress behaviors.”

The result, Dr. Houser says, is that neurodivergent doctors are judged by their response to stressors that put them at a disadvantage rather than their capabilities under more positive circumstances. “The more dysregulated someone is,” she says, “the more likely they are to manifest those observable behaviors.”

Dr. Neff notes that medicine is a very “sensory overwhelming work environment.” Working in ob.gyn. and primary care clinics, she remembers often coming home with a headache and a low-grade fever. “I had no idea why, but I now realize it’s because I was so sensory sick.”

Fearing for her job, Dr. Neff intentionally waited until she was in private practice to disclose her neurodiversity. “I don’t think it would have been received well if I was in a hospital system,” she says. “There’s a lot of invalidation that can come when someone chooses to self-disclose, and their colleagues don’t have a framework in mind to understand.” In one instance, after revealing her diagnosis, she remembers a well-known researcher telling her she wasn’t autistic.
Dr. Grosjean has also had former colleagues invalidate her diagnosis, something she says “keeps people quiet.”
 

Understanding the Neurodivergent Brain

The general lack of education on how neurodivergent brains work, physicians with these conditions say, means they are not often recognized for how they can function with certain accommodations and how they could contribute in unique ways if their workplace challenges were reduced.

“What we know about autistic brains is that we are systems-thinking pattern matchers,” says Dr. Houser, who formed an interdisciplinary task force to explore medical conditions that are more common in autistic people. Through that comprehensive approach, she has worked to find best practices to treat the constellation of conditions that can arise among these patients. “My autistic brain allowed me to do that,” Dr. Houser says.

Catriona McVey, a medical student in the United Kingdom and creator of the blog Attention Deficit Doctor, points out that “ADHD brains are interest-driven; they can be very focused when you’re doing something enjoyable or new due to increased dopaminergic stimulation.” Ms. McVey speaks from personal experience. “I’ve hyperfocused before on an essay that interested me for over 10 hours,” she recalls, “so I imagine if I was interested in surgery, I could easily hyperfocus on a long operation.” 

Empathy is another key part of medical practice. Contrary to stereotypes of neurodivergent people lacking empathy, current research suggests this isn’t true. A concept known as the “double empathy problem,” a term coined by British researcher Damian Milton in 2012, challenges the misconception that autistic people do not have empathy, explains Dr. Grosjean.

Mr. Milton theorized that there are two types of empathy: emotional, when you feel someone else’s pain, and cognitive, which involves critical thinking to understand someone’s emotions or thoughts. “Autistic people have, in general, a lot of emotional empathy,” Dr. Grosjean says, “but the cognitive empathy they don’t have as well.”

Dr. Neff has experienced this in her practice. “I will often feel what my clients are feeling as they’re feeling it,” she says, adding that she has always had an innate ability to analyze and connect with clients. She’s good at observing the interplay of health conditions, incorporating biology, psychology, and social conceptualizations of issues, with nuance. She feels that recognizing behavioral patterns or psychological triggers in her patients helps her see them holistically and provide better care. “That was a skill even before I realized I was autistic, but I always thought it was just intuitive to everyone,” she says. 
 

Support Can Lead to Success

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to neurodivergent employees. However, getting those accommodations involves disclosure, which many physicians have reasons to avoid.

It also means more work. Requesting and putting adjustments in place can take a lot of time and energy to organize. Ms. McVey says they can be “long-winded, multistep tasks” that are not very compatible with ADHD. “Some doctors report that service pressures and funding are used as excuses to refuse adjustments,” she adds. 

Ms. McVey lists several workplace accommodations that could be helpful, including flexible working hours, a quiet space to complete paperwork, dictation software, and extra time for medical students to complete written exams.

Neurodivergent physicians have also called for increased diversity of senior leadership and utilizing “cognitive apprenticeship models,” where employees explain their thought processes and receive timely feedback.

But far too often, there is little intervention until a doctor reaches a crisis point. “I look forward to the day when we don’t have to wait until people are profoundly depleted to discover how their brains work,” says Dr. Houser.

Beyond logistical and structural changes in the medical field, Dr. Grosjean speaks of the simple need to listen to colleagues with an open mind and believe them when they express their feelings and experiences. “Everyone has a role to play in challenging stigma, misconceptions, and stereotypes,” Ms. McVey agrees. Ask yourself the old question, she suggests: “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, Kansas, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

Despite a precipitous rise in cyberattacks against the health sector in recent years, a weeks-long disruption of this magnitude is beyond what most health systems are prepared for, said John S. Clark, an associate chief pharmacy officer at the University of Michigan health system.

“I don’t believe that anyone is fully prepared,” he said. Most emergency management plans “are designed around long-term downtimes that are into one, two, or three days.”

Ascension in a public statement May 9 said its care teams were “trained for these kinds of disruptions,” but did not respond to questions in early June about whether it had prepared for longer periods of downtime. Ascension said June 14 it had restored access to electronic health records across its network, but that patient “medical records and other information collected between May 8” and when the service was restored “may be temporarily inaccessible as we work to update the portal with information collected during the system downtime.”

Ruckle said he “had no training” for the cyberattack.
 

Back to Paper

Lisa Watson, an intensive care unit nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, described her own close call. She said she nearly administered the wrong medication to a critically ill patient because she couldn’t scan it as she normally would. “My patient probably would have passed away had I not caught it,” she said.

Watson is no stranger to using paper for patients’ medical charts, saying she did so “for probably half of my career,” before electronic health records became ubiquitous in hospitals. What happened after the cyberattack was “by no means the same.”

“When we paper-charted, we had systems in place to get those orders to other departments in a timely manner,” she said, “and those have all gone away.”

Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, described a close call with “administering the wrong dosage” of a patient’s blood pressure medication. “Luckily,” she said, it was “triple-checked and remedied before that could happen. But I think the potential for harm is there when you have so much information and paperwork that you have to go through.”

Clinicians say their hospitals have relied on slapdash workarounds, using handwritten notes, faxes, sticky notes, and basic computer spreadsheets — many devised on the fly by doctors and nurses — to care for patients.

More than a dozen other nurses and doctors, some of them without union protections, at Ascension hospitals in Michigan recounted situations in which they say patient care was compromised. Those clinicians spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation by their employer.

An Ascension hospital emergency room doctor in Detroit said a man on the city’s east side was given a dangerous narcotic intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up. As a result, the patient’s breathing slowed to the point that he had to be put on a ventilator. “We intubated him and we sent him to the ICU because he got the wrong medication.”

A nurse in a Michigan Ascension hospital ER said a woman with low blood sugar and “altered mental status” went into cardiac arrest and died after staff said they waited four hours for lab results they needed to determine how to treat her, but never received. “If I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me down the street to another hospital,” the same ER nurse said.

Similar concerns reportedly led a travel nurse at an Ascension hospital in Indiana to quit. “I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm,” Justin Neisser told CBS4 in Indianapolis in May.

Several nurses and doctors at Ascension hospitals said they feared the errors they’ve witnessed since the cyberattack began could threaten their professional licenses. “This is how a RaDonda Vaught happens,” one nurse said, referring to the Tennessee nurse who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in 2022 for a fatal drug error.

Reporters were not able to review records to verify clinicians’ claims because of privacy laws surrounding patients’ medical information that apply to health care professionals.

Ascension declined to answer questions about claims that care has been affected by the ransomware attack. “As we have made clear throughout this cyber attack which has impacted our system and our dedicated clinical providers, caring for our patients is our highest priority,” Sean Fitzpatrick, Ascension’s vice president of external communications, said via email on June 3. “We are confident that our care providers in our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care.”

The federal government requires hospitals to protect patients’ sensitive health data, according to cybersecurity experts. However, there are no federal requirements for hospitals to prevent or prepare for cyberattacks that could compromise their electronic systems.
 

Hospitals: ‘The No.1 Target of Ransomware’

“We’ve started to think about these as public health issues and disasters on the scale of earthquakes or hurricanes,” said Jeff Tully, a co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California-San Diego. “These types of cybersecurity incidents should be thought of as a matter of when, and not if.”

Josh Corman, a cybersecurity expert and advocate, said ransom crews regard hospitals as the perfect prey: “They have terrible security and they’ll pay. So almost immediately, hospitals went to the No. 1 target of ransomware.”

In 2023, the health sector experienced the largest share of ransomware attacks of 16 infrastructure sectors considered vital to national security or safety, according to an FBI report on internet crimes. In March, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said reported large breaches involving ransomware had jumped by 264% over the past five years.

A cyberattack this year on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division that processes billions of health care transactions every year, crippled the business of providers, pharmacies, and hospitals.

In May, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty told lawmakers the company paid a $22 million ransom as a result of the Change Healthcare attack — which occurred after hackers accessed a company portal that didn’t have multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool.

The Biden administration in recent months has pushed to bolster health care cybersecurity standards, but it’s not clear which new measures will be required.

In January, HHS nudged companies to improve email security, add multifactor authentication, and institute cybersecurity training and testing, among other voluntary measures. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is expected to release new requirements for hospitals, but the scope and timing are unclear. The same is true of an update HHS is expected to make to patient privacy regulations.

HHS said the voluntary measures “will inform the creation of new enforceable cybersecurity standards,” department spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement.

“The recent cyberattack at Ascension only underscores the need for everyone in the health care ecosystem to do their part to secure their systems and protect patients,” Nesbit said.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the hospital industry contend cybersecurity mandates or penalties are misplaced and would curtail hospitals’ resources to fend off attacks.

“Hospitals and health systems are not the primary source of cyber risk exposure facing the health care sector,” the American Hospital Association, the largest lobbying group for U.S. hospitals, said in an April statement prepared for U.S. House lawmakers. Most large data breaches that hit hospitals in 2023 originated with third-party “business associates” or other health entities, including CMS itself, the AHA statement said.

Hospitals consolidating into large multistate health systems face increased risk of data breaches and ransomware attacks, according to one study. Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

And while cybersecurity regulations can quickly become outdated, they can at least make it clear that if health systems fail to implement basic protections there “should be consequences for that,” Jim Bagian, a former director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the Veterans Health Administration, told Michigan Public’s Stateside.

Patients can pay the price when lapses occur. Those in hospital care face a greater likelihood of death during a cyberattack, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Workers concerned about patient safety at Ascension hospitals in Michigan have called for the company to make changes.

“We implore Ascension to recognize the internal problems that continue to plague its hospitals, both publicly and transparently,” said Dina Carlisle, a nurse and the president of the OPEIU Local 40 union, which represents nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester. At least 125 staff members at that Ascension hospital have signed a petition asking administrators to temporarily reduce elective surgeries and nonemergency patient admissions, like under the protocols many hospitals adopted early in the covid-19 pandemic.

Watson, the Kansas ICU nurse, said in late May that nurses had urged management to bring in more nurses to help manage the workflow. “Everything that we say has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

“It is very hard to be a nurse at Ascension right now,” Watson said in late May. “It is very hard to be a patient at Ascension right now.”

If you’re a patient or worker at an Ascension hospital and would like to tell KFF Health News about your experiences, click here to share your story with us.
 

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, Kansas, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

Despite a precipitous rise in cyberattacks against the health sector in recent years, a weeks-long disruption of this magnitude is beyond what most health systems are prepared for, said John S. Clark, an associate chief pharmacy officer at the University of Michigan health system.

“I don’t believe that anyone is fully prepared,” he said. Most emergency management plans “are designed around long-term downtimes that are into one, two, or three days.”

Ascension in a public statement May 9 said its care teams were “trained for these kinds of disruptions,” but did not respond to questions in early June about whether it had prepared for longer periods of downtime. Ascension said June 14 it had restored access to electronic health records across its network, but that patient “medical records and other information collected between May 8” and when the service was restored “may be temporarily inaccessible as we work to update the portal with information collected during the system downtime.”

Ruckle said he “had no training” for the cyberattack.
 

Back to Paper

Lisa Watson, an intensive care unit nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, described her own close call. She said she nearly administered the wrong medication to a critically ill patient because she couldn’t scan it as she normally would. “My patient probably would have passed away had I not caught it,” she said.

Watson is no stranger to using paper for patients’ medical charts, saying she did so “for probably half of my career,” before electronic health records became ubiquitous in hospitals. What happened after the cyberattack was “by no means the same.”

“When we paper-charted, we had systems in place to get those orders to other departments in a timely manner,” she said, “and those have all gone away.”

Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, described a close call with “administering the wrong dosage” of a patient’s blood pressure medication. “Luckily,” she said, it was “triple-checked and remedied before that could happen. But I think the potential for harm is there when you have so much information and paperwork that you have to go through.”

Clinicians say their hospitals have relied on slapdash workarounds, using handwritten notes, faxes, sticky notes, and basic computer spreadsheets — many devised on the fly by doctors and nurses — to care for patients.

More than a dozen other nurses and doctors, some of them without union protections, at Ascension hospitals in Michigan recounted situations in which they say patient care was compromised. Those clinicians spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation by their employer.

An Ascension hospital emergency room doctor in Detroit said a man on the city’s east side was given a dangerous narcotic intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up. As a result, the patient’s breathing slowed to the point that he had to be put on a ventilator. “We intubated him and we sent him to the ICU because he got the wrong medication.”

A nurse in a Michigan Ascension hospital ER said a woman with low blood sugar and “altered mental status” went into cardiac arrest and died after staff said they waited four hours for lab results they needed to determine how to treat her, but never received. “If I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me down the street to another hospital,” the same ER nurse said.

Similar concerns reportedly led a travel nurse at an Ascension hospital in Indiana to quit. “I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm,” Justin Neisser told CBS4 in Indianapolis in May.

Several nurses and doctors at Ascension hospitals said they feared the errors they’ve witnessed since the cyberattack began could threaten their professional licenses. “This is how a RaDonda Vaught happens,” one nurse said, referring to the Tennessee nurse who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in 2022 for a fatal drug error.

Reporters were not able to review records to verify clinicians’ claims because of privacy laws surrounding patients’ medical information that apply to health care professionals.

Ascension declined to answer questions about claims that care has been affected by the ransomware attack. “As we have made clear throughout this cyber attack which has impacted our system and our dedicated clinical providers, caring for our patients is our highest priority,” Sean Fitzpatrick, Ascension’s vice president of external communications, said via email on June 3. “We are confident that our care providers in our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care.”

The federal government requires hospitals to protect patients’ sensitive health data, according to cybersecurity experts. However, there are no federal requirements for hospitals to prevent or prepare for cyberattacks that could compromise their electronic systems.
 

Hospitals: ‘The No.1 Target of Ransomware’

“We’ve started to think about these as public health issues and disasters on the scale of earthquakes or hurricanes,” said Jeff Tully, a co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California-San Diego. “These types of cybersecurity incidents should be thought of as a matter of when, and not if.”

Josh Corman, a cybersecurity expert and advocate, said ransom crews regard hospitals as the perfect prey: “They have terrible security and they’ll pay. So almost immediately, hospitals went to the No. 1 target of ransomware.”

In 2023, the health sector experienced the largest share of ransomware attacks of 16 infrastructure sectors considered vital to national security or safety, according to an FBI report on internet crimes. In March, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said reported large breaches involving ransomware had jumped by 264% over the past five years.

A cyberattack this year on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division that processes billions of health care transactions every year, crippled the business of providers, pharmacies, and hospitals.

In May, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty told lawmakers the company paid a $22 million ransom as a result of the Change Healthcare attack — which occurred after hackers accessed a company portal that didn’t have multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool.

The Biden administration in recent months has pushed to bolster health care cybersecurity standards, but it’s not clear which new measures will be required.

In January, HHS nudged companies to improve email security, add multifactor authentication, and institute cybersecurity training and testing, among other voluntary measures. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is expected to release new requirements for hospitals, but the scope and timing are unclear. The same is true of an update HHS is expected to make to patient privacy regulations.

HHS said the voluntary measures “will inform the creation of new enforceable cybersecurity standards,” department spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement.

“The recent cyberattack at Ascension only underscores the need for everyone in the health care ecosystem to do their part to secure their systems and protect patients,” Nesbit said.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the hospital industry contend cybersecurity mandates or penalties are misplaced and would curtail hospitals’ resources to fend off attacks.

“Hospitals and health systems are not the primary source of cyber risk exposure facing the health care sector,” the American Hospital Association, the largest lobbying group for U.S. hospitals, said in an April statement prepared for U.S. House lawmakers. Most large data breaches that hit hospitals in 2023 originated with third-party “business associates” or other health entities, including CMS itself, the AHA statement said.

Hospitals consolidating into large multistate health systems face increased risk of data breaches and ransomware attacks, according to one study. Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

And while cybersecurity regulations can quickly become outdated, they can at least make it clear that if health systems fail to implement basic protections there “should be consequences for that,” Jim Bagian, a former director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the Veterans Health Administration, told Michigan Public’s Stateside.

Patients can pay the price when lapses occur. Those in hospital care face a greater likelihood of death during a cyberattack, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Workers concerned about patient safety at Ascension hospitals in Michigan have called for the company to make changes.

“We implore Ascension to recognize the internal problems that continue to plague its hospitals, both publicly and transparently,” said Dina Carlisle, a nurse and the president of the OPEIU Local 40 union, which represents nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester. At least 125 staff members at that Ascension hospital have signed a petition asking administrators to temporarily reduce elective surgeries and nonemergency patient admissions, like under the protocols many hospitals adopted early in the covid-19 pandemic.

Watson, the Kansas ICU nurse, said in late May that nurses had urged management to bring in more nurses to help manage the workflow. “Everything that we say has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

“It is very hard to be a nurse at Ascension right now,” Watson said in late May. “It is very hard to be a patient at Ascension right now.”

If you’re a patient or worker at an Ascension hospital and would like to tell KFF Health News about your experiences, click here to share your story with us.
 

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, Kansas, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

Despite a precipitous rise in cyberattacks against the health sector in recent years, a weeks-long disruption of this magnitude is beyond what most health systems are prepared for, said John S. Clark, an associate chief pharmacy officer at the University of Michigan health system.

“I don’t believe that anyone is fully prepared,” he said. Most emergency management plans “are designed around long-term downtimes that are into one, two, or three days.”

Ascension in a public statement May 9 said its care teams were “trained for these kinds of disruptions,” but did not respond to questions in early June about whether it had prepared for longer periods of downtime. Ascension said June 14 it had restored access to electronic health records across its network, but that patient “medical records and other information collected between May 8” and when the service was restored “may be temporarily inaccessible as we work to update the portal with information collected during the system downtime.”

Ruckle said he “had no training” for the cyberattack.
 

Back to Paper

Lisa Watson, an intensive care unit nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, described her own close call. She said she nearly administered the wrong medication to a critically ill patient because she couldn’t scan it as she normally would. “My patient probably would have passed away had I not caught it,” she said.

Watson is no stranger to using paper for patients’ medical charts, saying she did so “for probably half of my career,” before electronic health records became ubiquitous in hospitals. What happened after the cyberattack was “by no means the same.”

“When we paper-charted, we had systems in place to get those orders to other departments in a timely manner,” she said, “and those have all gone away.”

Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, described a close call with “administering the wrong dosage” of a patient’s blood pressure medication. “Luckily,” she said, it was “triple-checked and remedied before that could happen. But I think the potential for harm is there when you have so much information and paperwork that you have to go through.”

Clinicians say their hospitals have relied on slapdash workarounds, using handwritten notes, faxes, sticky notes, and basic computer spreadsheets — many devised on the fly by doctors and nurses — to care for patients.

More than a dozen other nurses and doctors, some of them without union protections, at Ascension hospitals in Michigan recounted situations in which they say patient care was compromised. Those clinicians spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation by their employer.

An Ascension hospital emergency room doctor in Detroit said a man on the city’s east side was given a dangerous narcotic intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up. As a result, the patient’s breathing slowed to the point that he had to be put on a ventilator. “We intubated him and we sent him to the ICU because he got the wrong medication.”

A nurse in a Michigan Ascension hospital ER said a woman with low blood sugar and “altered mental status” went into cardiac arrest and died after staff said they waited four hours for lab results they needed to determine how to treat her, but never received. “If I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me down the street to another hospital,” the same ER nurse said.

Similar concerns reportedly led a travel nurse at an Ascension hospital in Indiana to quit. “I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm,” Justin Neisser told CBS4 in Indianapolis in May.

Several nurses and doctors at Ascension hospitals said they feared the errors they’ve witnessed since the cyberattack began could threaten their professional licenses. “This is how a RaDonda Vaught happens,” one nurse said, referring to the Tennessee nurse who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in 2022 for a fatal drug error.

Reporters were not able to review records to verify clinicians’ claims because of privacy laws surrounding patients’ medical information that apply to health care professionals.

Ascension declined to answer questions about claims that care has been affected by the ransomware attack. “As we have made clear throughout this cyber attack which has impacted our system and our dedicated clinical providers, caring for our patients is our highest priority,” Sean Fitzpatrick, Ascension’s vice president of external communications, said via email on June 3. “We are confident that our care providers in our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care.”

The federal government requires hospitals to protect patients’ sensitive health data, according to cybersecurity experts. However, there are no federal requirements for hospitals to prevent or prepare for cyberattacks that could compromise their electronic systems.
 

Hospitals: ‘The No.1 Target of Ransomware’

“We’ve started to think about these as public health issues and disasters on the scale of earthquakes or hurricanes,” said Jeff Tully, a co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California-San Diego. “These types of cybersecurity incidents should be thought of as a matter of when, and not if.”

Josh Corman, a cybersecurity expert and advocate, said ransom crews regard hospitals as the perfect prey: “They have terrible security and they’ll pay. So almost immediately, hospitals went to the No. 1 target of ransomware.”

In 2023, the health sector experienced the largest share of ransomware attacks of 16 infrastructure sectors considered vital to national security or safety, according to an FBI report on internet crimes. In March, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said reported large breaches involving ransomware had jumped by 264% over the past five years.

A cyberattack this year on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division that processes billions of health care transactions every year, crippled the business of providers, pharmacies, and hospitals.

In May, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty told lawmakers the company paid a $22 million ransom as a result of the Change Healthcare attack — which occurred after hackers accessed a company portal that didn’t have multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool.

The Biden administration in recent months has pushed to bolster health care cybersecurity standards, but it’s not clear which new measures will be required.

In January, HHS nudged companies to improve email security, add multifactor authentication, and institute cybersecurity training and testing, among other voluntary measures. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is expected to release new requirements for hospitals, but the scope and timing are unclear. The same is true of an update HHS is expected to make to patient privacy regulations.

HHS said the voluntary measures “will inform the creation of new enforceable cybersecurity standards,” department spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement.

“The recent cyberattack at Ascension only underscores the need for everyone in the health care ecosystem to do their part to secure their systems and protect patients,” Nesbit said.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the hospital industry contend cybersecurity mandates or penalties are misplaced and would curtail hospitals’ resources to fend off attacks.

“Hospitals and health systems are not the primary source of cyber risk exposure facing the health care sector,” the American Hospital Association, the largest lobbying group for U.S. hospitals, said in an April statement prepared for U.S. House lawmakers. Most large data breaches that hit hospitals in 2023 originated with third-party “business associates” or other health entities, including CMS itself, the AHA statement said.

Hospitals consolidating into large multistate health systems face increased risk of data breaches and ransomware attacks, according to one study. Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

And while cybersecurity regulations can quickly become outdated, they can at least make it clear that if health systems fail to implement basic protections there “should be consequences for that,” Jim Bagian, a former director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the Veterans Health Administration, told Michigan Public’s Stateside.

Patients can pay the price when lapses occur. Those in hospital care face a greater likelihood of death during a cyberattack, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Workers concerned about patient safety at Ascension hospitals in Michigan have called for the company to make changes.

“We implore Ascension to recognize the internal problems that continue to plague its hospitals, both publicly and transparently,” said Dina Carlisle, a nurse and the president of the OPEIU Local 40 union, which represents nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester. At least 125 staff members at that Ascension hospital have signed a petition asking administrators to temporarily reduce elective surgeries and nonemergency patient admissions, like under the protocols many hospitals adopted early in the covid-19 pandemic.

Watson, the Kansas ICU nurse, said in late May that nurses had urged management to bring in more nurses to help manage the workflow. “Everything that we say has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

“It is very hard to be a nurse at Ascension right now,” Watson said in late May. “It is very hard to be a patient at Ascension right now.”

If you’re a patient or worker at an Ascension hospital and would like to tell KFF Health News about your experiences, click here to share your story with us.
 

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.