Feature

For Tara Lagu, MD, the realization that the health care system was broken for patients with disabilities came when a woman she had been treating seemed to keep ignoring Dr. Lagu’s request to see a urologist.

When Dr. Lagu asked the patient’s two attentive daughters about the delay, their response surprised her. The women said they couldn’t find a urologist who was willing to see a patient in a wheelchair.

Ingram/thinkstock

Surprised and a bit doubtful, Dr. Lagu checked around. She found that, indeed, the only way to get her patient in to see the type of physician required was to send her by ambulance.

“It opened my eyes to how hard it is for patients with disabilities to navigate the health care system,” Dr. Lagu said.

Dr. Lagu, director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research at Northwestern University in Chicago, decided to take a closer look at how her colleagues in medicine care for – or not, as the case proved – the roughly one in four American adults, and millions of children, with disabilities.

In a series of three focus groups, Dr. Lagu and colleagues identified a range of obstacles – including some physician attitudes – that prevent people with disabilities from getting adequate care.

Lack of experience, logistics often cited

Some physicians admitted that limited resources and training left them without the space and necessary knowledge to properly care for patients with disabilities. They felt they lacked the expertise or exposure to care for individuals with disabilities, nor did they have enough time and space to properly accommodate these patients, according to the researchers. Some said they struggled to coordinate care for individuals with disabilities and did not know which types of accessible equipment, such as adjustable tables and chair scales, were needed or how to use them.

Several physicians also noted that they are inadequately reimbursed for the special accommodations – including additional staff, equipment, and time – required to care for these patients. One primary care physician said he hired a sign-language interpreter for a patient but the bill for the services exceeded the amount insurance reimbursed. As a result, he said, he spent $30 of his own money per visit to see the patient.

Because of these limitations, some physicians in the focus groups said they try to turn away patients with disabilities. Both specialists and general practitioners said they had told patients with disabilities that they didn’t feel they could provide the care needed, and suggested they look elsewhere. A few were surprisingly – even upsettingly – honest, Dr. Lagu said, making statements such as: “I am not the doctor for you.”
 

‘We really need a rewrite’

Previous work has shown that people with disabilities have worse health outcomes, such as undetected cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

But “the disability itself isn’t what leads to worse outcomes,” said Allison Kessler, MD, section chief of the Renée Crown Center for Spinal Cord Innovation and associate director of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago*. This study does a good job at highlighting “the need for change on multiple levels,” said Dr. Kessler, who was not a member of the study team.

“People with disabilities have all these disparities in access and outcomes. We’ve never understood why. I think the why is complicated,” Dr. Lagu added. “I think this study suggests some of the negative outcomes are due to explicit bias.”

“It’s also clear that the current framework of health care in the United States does not lend to allowing physicians and medical providers the time needed to adequately address patient issues – those with disabilities or just multiple complex problems,” Colin O’Reilly, DO, vice president and chief medical officer at Children’s Specialized Hospital, an acute rehabilitation facility affiliated with RWJBarnabas Health, in New Brunswick, N.J. “We really need a rewrite.”

However, Dr. O’Reilly said, such a small study population with no control group and no mention of physician resources makes it difficult to come to a strong conclusion about physician bias and discriminatory attitudes against individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Lagu agreed, saying this research “is not conclusive in any way.” The excuses doctors use to discharge patients with disabilities, such as “we don’t accept your insurance,” “we aren’t taking new patients,” and “we can’t provide you with the appropriate care,” could be legitimate, the study authors wrote. But the “disparities in care for people with disabilities suggest that there is a pattern of more frequently denying care to them than people without a disability,” they added.

Dr. Kessler said many of her patients have told her they experience barriers to care. Some say finding an office with the necessary equipment is a challenge or that they often don’t feel welcome.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all public and private places that are open to the general public, including medical offices.

“It is difficult to enforce the ADA in medical settings,” the researchers noted. “Explanations physicians gave in this study could, for any single case of denying care, be legitimate.” Knowing whether a particular instance of denial of care represents discrimination related to disability is “nearly impossible,” they wrote.

All the experts agreed that the study adds valuable insight into an ongoing health disparity. And while system and policy changes are required, Dr. Kessler said, individual physicians can take steps to improve the situation.

A physician in an academic setting can look at the curriculum and the medical school and see about increasing exposure to patients with disabilities earlier in training. In a practice, physicians can retrain staff to ask every patient if an accommodation is needed. “Each one of those changes can only help us move our system in the right direction,” Dr. Kessler said.

The study was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

*Correction, 10/5/22: This article includes a corrected title for Dr. Allison Kessler.

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

For Tara Lagu, MD, the realization that the health care system was broken for patients with disabilities came when a woman she had been treating seemed to keep ignoring Dr. Lagu’s request to see a urologist.

When Dr. Lagu asked the patient’s two attentive daughters about the delay, their response surprised her. The women said they couldn’t find a urologist who was willing to see a patient in a wheelchair.

Ingram/thinkstock

Surprised and a bit doubtful, Dr. Lagu checked around. She found that, indeed, the only way to get her patient in to see the type of physician required was to send her by ambulance.

“It opened my eyes to how hard it is for patients with disabilities to navigate the health care system,” Dr. Lagu said.

Dr. Lagu, director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research at Northwestern University in Chicago, decided to take a closer look at how her colleagues in medicine care for – or not, as the case proved – the roughly one in four American adults, and millions of children, with disabilities.

In a series of three focus groups, Dr. Lagu and colleagues identified a range of obstacles – including some physician attitudes – that prevent people with disabilities from getting adequate care.

Lack of experience, logistics often cited

Some physicians admitted that limited resources and training left them without the space and necessary knowledge to properly care for patients with disabilities. They felt they lacked the expertise or exposure to care for individuals with disabilities, nor did they have enough time and space to properly accommodate these patients, according to the researchers. Some said they struggled to coordinate care for individuals with disabilities and did not know which types of accessible equipment, such as adjustable tables and chair scales, were needed or how to use them.

Several physicians also noted that they are inadequately reimbursed for the special accommodations – including additional staff, equipment, and time – required to care for these patients. One primary care physician said he hired a sign-language interpreter for a patient but the bill for the services exceeded the amount insurance reimbursed. As a result, he said, he spent $30 of his own money per visit to see the patient.

Because of these limitations, some physicians in the focus groups said they try to turn away patients with disabilities. Both specialists and general practitioners said they had told patients with disabilities that they didn’t feel they could provide the care needed, and suggested they look elsewhere. A few were surprisingly – even upsettingly – honest, Dr. Lagu said, making statements such as: “I am not the doctor for you.”
 

‘We really need a rewrite’

Previous work has shown that people with disabilities have worse health outcomes, such as undetected cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

But “the disability itself isn’t what leads to worse outcomes,” said Allison Kessler, MD, section chief of the Renée Crown Center for Spinal Cord Innovation and associate director of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago*. This study does a good job at highlighting “the need for change on multiple levels,” said Dr. Kessler, who was not a member of the study team.

“People with disabilities have all these disparities in access and outcomes. We’ve never understood why. I think the why is complicated,” Dr. Lagu added. “I think this study suggests some of the negative outcomes are due to explicit bias.”

“It’s also clear that the current framework of health care in the United States does not lend to allowing physicians and medical providers the time needed to adequately address patient issues – those with disabilities or just multiple complex problems,” Colin O’Reilly, DO, vice president and chief medical officer at Children’s Specialized Hospital, an acute rehabilitation facility affiliated with RWJBarnabas Health, in New Brunswick, N.J. “We really need a rewrite.”

However, Dr. O’Reilly said, such a small study population with no control group and no mention of physician resources makes it difficult to come to a strong conclusion about physician bias and discriminatory attitudes against individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Lagu agreed, saying this research “is not conclusive in any way.” The excuses doctors use to discharge patients with disabilities, such as “we don’t accept your insurance,” “we aren’t taking new patients,” and “we can’t provide you with the appropriate care,” could be legitimate, the study authors wrote. But the “disparities in care for people with disabilities suggest that there is a pattern of more frequently denying care to them than people without a disability,” they added.

Dr. Kessler said many of her patients have told her they experience barriers to care. Some say finding an office with the necessary equipment is a challenge or that they often don’t feel welcome.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all public and private places that are open to the general public, including medical offices.

“It is difficult to enforce the ADA in medical settings,” the researchers noted. “Explanations physicians gave in this study could, for any single case of denying care, be legitimate.” Knowing whether a particular instance of denial of care represents discrimination related to disability is “nearly impossible,” they wrote.

All the experts agreed that the study adds valuable insight into an ongoing health disparity. And while system and policy changes are required, Dr. Kessler said, individual physicians can take steps to improve the situation.

A physician in an academic setting can look at the curriculum and the medical school and see about increasing exposure to patients with disabilities earlier in training. In a practice, physicians can retrain staff to ask every patient if an accommodation is needed. “Each one of those changes can only help us move our system in the right direction,” Dr. Kessler said.

The study was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

*Correction, 10/5/22: This article includes a corrected title for Dr. Allison Kessler.

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

For Tara Lagu, MD, the realization that the health care system was broken for patients with disabilities came when a woman she had been treating seemed to keep ignoring Dr. Lagu’s request to see a urologist.

When Dr. Lagu asked the patient’s two attentive daughters about the delay, their response surprised her. The women said they couldn’t find a urologist who was willing to see a patient in a wheelchair.

Ingram/thinkstock

Surprised and a bit doubtful, Dr. Lagu checked around. She found that, indeed, the only way to get her patient in to see the type of physician required was to send her by ambulance.

“It opened my eyes to how hard it is for patients with disabilities to navigate the health care system,” Dr. Lagu said.

Dr. Lagu, director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research at Northwestern University in Chicago, decided to take a closer look at how her colleagues in medicine care for – or not, as the case proved – the roughly one in four American adults, and millions of children, with disabilities.

In a series of three focus groups, Dr. Lagu and colleagues identified a range of obstacles – including some physician attitudes – that prevent people with disabilities from getting adequate care.

Lack of experience, logistics often cited

Some physicians admitted that limited resources and training left them without the space and necessary knowledge to properly care for patients with disabilities. They felt they lacked the expertise or exposure to care for individuals with disabilities, nor did they have enough time and space to properly accommodate these patients, according to the researchers. Some said they struggled to coordinate care for individuals with disabilities and did not know which types of accessible equipment, such as adjustable tables and chair scales, were needed or how to use them.

Several physicians also noted that they are inadequately reimbursed for the special accommodations – including additional staff, equipment, and time – required to care for these patients. One primary care physician said he hired a sign-language interpreter for a patient but the bill for the services exceeded the amount insurance reimbursed. As a result, he said, he spent $30 of his own money per visit to see the patient.

Because of these limitations, some physicians in the focus groups said they try to turn away patients with disabilities. Both specialists and general practitioners said they had told patients with disabilities that they didn’t feel they could provide the care needed, and suggested they look elsewhere. A few were surprisingly – even upsettingly – honest, Dr. Lagu said, making statements such as: “I am not the doctor for you.”
 

‘We really need a rewrite’

Previous work has shown that people with disabilities have worse health outcomes, such as undetected cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

But “the disability itself isn’t what leads to worse outcomes,” said Allison Kessler, MD, section chief of the Renée Crown Center for Spinal Cord Innovation and associate director of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago*. This study does a good job at highlighting “the need for change on multiple levels,” said Dr. Kessler, who was not a member of the study team.

“People with disabilities have all these disparities in access and outcomes. We’ve never understood why. I think the why is complicated,” Dr. Lagu added. “I think this study suggests some of the negative outcomes are due to explicit bias.”

“It’s also clear that the current framework of health care in the United States does not lend to allowing physicians and medical providers the time needed to adequately address patient issues – those with disabilities or just multiple complex problems,” Colin O’Reilly, DO, vice president and chief medical officer at Children’s Specialized Hospital, an acute rehabilitation facility affiliated with RWJBarnabas Health, in New Brunswick, N.J. “We really need a rewrite.”

However, Dr. O’Reilly said, such a small study population with no control group and no mention of physician resources makes it difficult to come to a strong conclusion about physician bias and discriminatory attitudes against individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Lagu agreed, saying this research “is not conclusive in any way.” The excuses doctors use to discharge patients with disabilities, such as “we don’t accept your insurance,” “we aren’t taking new patients,” and “we can’t provide you with the appropriate care,” could be legitimate, the study authors wrote. But the “disparities in care for people with disabilities suggest that there is a pattern of more frequently denying care to them than people without a disability,” they added.

Dr. Kessler said many of her patients have told her they experience barriers to care. Some say finding an office with the necessary equipment is a challenge or that they often don’t feel welcome.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all public and private places that are open to the general public, including medical offices.

“It is difficult to enforce the ADA in medical settings,” the researchers noted. “Explanations physicians gave in this study could, for any single case of denying care, be legitimate.” Knowing whether a particular instance of denial of care represents discrimination related to disability is “nearly impossible,” they wrote.

All the experts agreed that the study adds valuable insight into an ongoing health disparity. And while system and policy changes are required, Dr. Kessler said, individual physicians can take steps to improve the situation.

A physician in an academic setting can look at the curriculum and the medical school and see about increasing exposure to patients with disabilities earlier in training. In a practice, physicians can retrain staff to ask every patient if an accommodation is needed. “Each one of those changes can only help us move our system in the right direction,” Dr. Kessler said.

The study was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

*Correction, 10/5/22: This article includes a corrected title for Dr. Allison Kessler.

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

Frankie Cook remembers last year’s car crash only in flashes.

She was driving a friend home from high school on a winding road outside Rome, Ga. She saw standing water from a recent rain. She tried to slow down but lost control of her car on a big curve. “The car flipped about three times,” Frankie said. “We spun around and went off the side of this hill. My car was on its side, and the back end was crushed up into a tree.”

Frankie said the air bags deployed and both passengers were wearing seat belts, so she was left with just a headache when her father, Russell Cook, came to pick her up from the crash site.

Frankie, then a high school junior, worried she might have a concussion that could affect her performance on an upcoming Advanced Placement exam, so she and her father decided to stop by an urgent care center near their house to get her checked out. They didn’t make it past the front desk.

“‘We don’t take third-party insurance,’” Russell said the receptionist at Atrium Health Floyd Urgent Care Rome told him, though he wasn’t sure what she meant. “She told me, like, three times.”

The problem didn’t seem to be that the clinic lacked the medical expertise to evaluate Frankie. Rather, the Cooks seemed to be confronting a reimbursement policy that is often used by urgent care centers to avoid waiting for payments from car insurance settlements.

Russell was told to take Frankie to an emergency room, which by law must see all patients regardless of such issues. The nearest one, at Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center, was about a mile down the road and was owned by the same hospital system as the urgent care center.

There, Russell said, a doctor looked Frankie over “for just a few minutes,” did precautionary CT scans of her head and body, and sent her home with advice to “take some Tylenol” and rest. She did not have a concussion or serious head injury and was able to take her AP exam on time.

Then the bill came.

The patient: Frankie Cook, 18, now a first-year college student from Rome, Ga.

Medical services: A medical evaluation and two CT scans.

Service provider: Atrium Health Floyd, a hospital system with urgent care centers in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama.

Total bill: $17,005 for an emergency room visit; it was later adjusted to $11,805 after a duplicate charge was removed.

What gives: The Cooks hit a hazard in the health care system after Frankie’s car struck that tree: More and more hospital systems own urgent care centers, which have limits on whom they treat – for both financial and medical reasons.

Russell was pretty upset after he received such a large bill, especially when he had tried to make a quick, inexpensive trip to the clinic. He said Frankie’s grandmother was seen at an urgent care center after a car wreck and walked out with a bill for just a few hundred dollars.

“That’s kind of what I was expecting,” he said. “She just really needed to be looked over.”

So why was Frankie turned away from an urgent care center?

Lou Ellen Horwitz, CEO of the Urgent Care Association, said it’s a pretty standard policy for urgent care centers not to treat injuries that result from car crashes, even minor ones. “Generally, as a rule, they do not take care of car accident victims regardless of the extent of their injuries, because it is going to go through that auto insurance claims process before the provider gets paid,” she said.

Ms. Horwitz said urgent care centers – even ones owned by big health systems – often operate on thin margins and can’t wait months and months for an auto insurance company to pay out a claim. She said “unfortunately” people tend to learn about such policies when they show up expecting care.

Fold in the complicated relationship between health and auto insurance companies and you have what Barak D. Richman, a health care policy professor at Duke University’s law school, called “the wildly complex world that we live in.”

“Each product has its own specifications about where to go and what it covers. Each one is incredibly difficult and complex to administer,” he said. “And each one imposes mistakes on the system.”

Atrium Health did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Frankie’s case.

Ms. Horwitz dismissed the idea that a health system might push people in car wrecks from urgent care centers to emergency rooms to make more money off them. Still, auto insurance generally pays more than health insurance for the same services.

Mr. Richman remained skeptical.

“At the risk of sounding a little too cynical, there are always dollar signs when a health care provider sees a patient come through the door,” Mr. Richman said.

Ateev Mehrotra, MD, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, Boston, said it was likely strategic for the urgent care center to be right down the street from the ER. Part of the strategy makes sense medically, he said, “because if a bad thing happens, you want to get them to some place with more skill really quickly.”

But he also said urgent care centers are “one of the most effective ways” for a health system to generate new revenue, creating a pipeline of new patients to visit its hospitals and later see doctors for testing and follow-up.

Dr. Mehrotra said urgent care centers are not bound by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law known as EMTALA that requires hospitals to stabilize patients regardless of their ability to pay.

At the time of Frankie’s visit, both the urgent care center and emergency room were owned by Floyd health system, which operated a handful of hospitals and clinics in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Since then, Floyd has merged with Atrium Health – a larger, North Carolina–based company that operates dozens of hospitals across the Southeast.

Frankie got a CT scan of her head and body in the emergency room, tests KHN confirmed she couldn’t have gotten at the urgent care center regardless of whether the test was medically necessary or just part of a protocol for people in car wrecks who complain of a headache.

Resolution: Sixteen months have passed since Frankie Cook’s hospital visit, and Russell has delayed paying any of the bill on advice he got from a family friend who’s an attorney. After insurance covered its share, the Cooks’ portion came to $1,042.

Getting to that number has been a frustrating process, Russell said. He heard about the initial $17,005 bill in a letter from a lawyer representing the hospital – another unnerving wrinkle of Frankie’s care resulting from the car wreck. The Cooks then had to pursue a lengthy appeal process to get a $5,200 duplicate charge removed from the bill.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Cooks’ insurer, paid $4,006 of the claim. It said in a statement that it’s “committed to providing access to high-quality medical care for our members. This matter was reviewed in accordance with our clinical guidelines, and the billed claims were processed accordingly.”

“It’s not going to put us out on the street,” Russell said of the $1,042 balance, “but we’ve got expenses like everybody else.”

He added, “I would have loved a $200 urgent care visit, but that ship has sailed.”

The takeaway: It’s important to remember that urgent care centers aren’t governed by the same laws as emergency rooms and that they can be more selective about whom they treat. Sometimes their reasons are financial, not clinical.

It’s not uncommon for urgent care centers – even ones in large health systems – to turn away people who have been in car wrecks because of the complications that car insurance settlements create.

Although urgent care visits are less expensive than going to an emergency room, the clinics often can’t offer the same level of care. And you might have to pay the cost of an urgent care visit just to find out you need follow-up care in the emergency room. Then you could be stuck with two bills.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Frankie Cook remembers last year’s car crash only in flashes.

She was driving a friend home from high school on a winding road outside Rome, Ga. She saw standing water from a recent rain. She tried to slow down but lost control of her car on a big curve. “The car flipped about three times,” Frankie said. “We spun around and went off the side of this hill. My car was on its side, and the back end was crushed up into a tree.”

Frankie said the air bags deployed and both passengers were wearing seat belts, so she was left with just a headache when her father, Russell Cook, came to pick her up from the crash site.

Frankie, then a high school junior, worried she might have a concussion that could affect her performance on an upcoming Advanced Placement exam, so she and her father decided to stop by an urgent care center near their house to get her checked out. They didn’t make it past the front desk.

“‘We don’t take third-party insurance,’” Russell said the receptionist at Atrium Health Floyd Urgent Care Rome told him, though he wasn’t sure what she meant. “She told me, like, three times.”

The problem didn’t seem to be that the clinic lacked the medical expertise to evaluate Frankie. Rather, the Cooks seemed to be confronting a reimbursement policy that is often used by urgent care centers to avoid waiting for payments from car insurance settlements.

Russell was told to take Frankie to an emergency room, which by law must see all patients regardless of such issues. The nearest one, at Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center, was about a mile down the road and was owned by the same hospital system as the urgent care center.

There, Russell said, a doctor looked Frankie over “for just a few minutes,” did precautionary CT scans of her head and body, and sent her home with advice to “take some Tylenol” and rest. She did not have a concussion or serious head injury and was able to take her AP exam on time.

Then the bill came.

The patient: Frankie Cook, 18, now a first-year college student from Rome, Ga.

Medical services: A medical evaluation and two CT scans.

Service provider: Atrium Health Floyd, a hospital system with urgent care centers in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama.

Total bill: $17,005 for an emergency room visit; it was later adjusted to $11,805 after a duplicate charge was removed.

What gives: The Cooks hit a hazard in the health care system after Frankie’s car struck that tree: More and more hospital systems own urgent care centers, which have limits on whom they treat – for both financial and medical reasons.

Russell was pretty upset after he received such a large bill, especially when he had tried to make a quick, inexpensive trip to the clinic. He said Frankie’s grandmother was seen at an urgent care center after a car wreck and walked out with a bill for just a few hundred dollars.

“That’s kind of what I was expecting,” he said. “She just really needed to be looked over.”

So why was Frankie turned away from an urgent care center?

Lou Ellen Horwitz, CEO of the Urgent Care Association, said it’s a pretty standard policy for urgent care centers not to treat injuries that result from car crashes, even minor ones. “Generally, as a rule, they do not take care of car accident victims regardless of the extent of their injuries, because it is going to go through that auto insurance claims process before the provider gets paid,” she said.

Ms. Horwitz said urgent care centers – even ones owned by big health systems – often operate on thin margins and can’t wait months and months for an auto insurance company to pay out a claim. She said “unfortunately” people tend to learn about such policies when they show up expecting care.

Fold in the complicated relationship between health and auto insurance companies and you have what Barak D. Richman, a health care policy professor at Duke University’s law school, called “the wildly complex world that we live in.”

“Each product has its own specifications about where to go and what it covers. Each one is incredibly difficult and complex to administer,” he said. “And each one imposes mistakes on the system.”

Atrium Health did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Frankie’s case.

Ms. Horwitz dismissed the idea that a health system might push people in car wrecks from urgent care centers to emergency rooms to make more money off them. Still, auto insurance generally pays more than health insurance for the same services.

Mr. Richman remained skeptical.

“At the risk of sounding a little too cynical, there are always dollar signs when a health care provider sees a patient come through the door,” Mr. Richman said.

Ateev Mehrotra, MD, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, Boston, said it was likely strategic for the urgent care center to be right down the street from the ER. Part of the strategy makes sense medically, he said, “because if a bad thing happens, you want to get them to some place with more skill really quickly.”

But he also said urgent care centers are “one of the most effective ways” for a health system to generate new revenue, creating a pipeline of new patients to visit its hospitals and later see doctors for testing and follow-up.

Dr. Mehrotra said urgent care centers are not bound by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law known as EMTALA that requires hospitals to stabilize patients regardless of their ability to pay.

At the time of Frankie’s visit, both the urgent care center and emergency room were owned by Floyd health system, which operated a handful of hospitals and clinics in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Since then, Floyd has merged with Atrium Health – a larger, North Carolina–based company that operates dozens of hospitals across the Southeast.

Frankie got a CT scan of her head and body in the emergency room, tests KHN confirmed she couldn’t have gotten at the urgent care center regardless of whether the test was medically necessary or just part of a protocol for people in car wrecks who complain of a headache.

Resolution: Sixteen months have passed since Frankie Cook’s hospital visit, and Russell has delayed paying any of the bill on advice he got from a family friend who’s an attorney. After insurance covered its share, the Cooks’ portion came to $1,042.

Getting to that number has been a frustrating process, Russell said. He heard about the initial $17,005 bill in a letter from a lawyer representing the hospital – another unnerving wrinkle of Frankie’s care resulting from the car wreck. The Cooks then had to pursue a lengthy appeal process to get a $5,200 duplicate charge removed from the bill.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Cooks’ insurer, paid $4,006 of the claim. It said in a statement that it’s “committed to providing access to high-quality medical care for our members. This matter was reviewed in accordance with our clinical guidelines, and the billed claims were processed accordingly.”

“It’s not going to put us out on the street,” Russell said of the $1,042 balance, “but we’ve got expenses like everybody else.”

He added, “I would have loved a $200 urgent care visit, but that ship has sailed.”

The takeaway: It’s important to remember that urgent care centers aren’t governed by the same laws as emergency rooms and that they can be more selective about whom they treat. Sometimes their reasons are financial, not clinical.

It’s not uncommon for urgent care centers – even ones in large health systems – to turn away people who have been in car wrecks because of the complications that car insurance settlements create.

Although urgent care visits are less expensive than going to an emergency room, the clinics often can’t offer the same level of care. And you might have to pay the cost of an urgent care visit just to find out you need follow-up care in the emergency room. Then you could be stuck with two bills.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Frankie Cook remembers last year’s car crash only in flashes.

She was driving a friend home from high school on a winding road outside Rome, Ga. She saw standing water from a recent rain. She tried to slow down but lost control of her car on a big curve. “The car flipped about three times,” Frankie said. “We spun around and went off the side of this hill. My car was on its side, and the back end was crushed up into a tree.”

Frankie said the air bags deployed and both passengers were wearing seat belts, so she was left with just a headache when her father, Russell Cook, came to pick her up from the crash site.

Frankie, then a high school junior, worried she might have a concussion that could affect her performance on an upcoming Advanced Placement exam, so she and her father decided to stop by an urgent care center near their house to get her checked out. They didn’t make it past the front desk.

“‘We don’t take third-party insurance,’” Russell said the receptionist at Atrium Health Floyd Urgent Care Rome told him, though he wasn’t sure what she meant. “She told me, like, three times.”

The problem didn’t seem to be that the clinic lacked the medical expertise to evaluate Frankie. Rather, the Cooks seemed to be confronting a reimbursement policy that is often used by urgent care centers to avoid waiting for payments from car insurance settlements.

Russell was told to take Frankie to an emergency room, which by law must see all patients regardless of such issues. The nearest one, at Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center, was about a mile down the road and was owned by the same hospital system as the urgent care center.

There, Russell said, a doctor looked Frankie over “for just a few minutes,” did precautionary CT scans of her head and body, and sent her home with advice to “take some Tylenol” and rest. She did not have a concussion or serious head injury and was able to take her AP exam on time.

Then the bill came.

The patient: Frankie Cook, 18, now a first-year college student from Rome, Ga.

Medical services: A medical evaluation and two CT scans.

Service provider: Atrium Health Floyd, a hospital system with urgent care centers in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama.

Total bill: $17,005 for an emergency room visit; it was later adjusted to $11,805 after a duplicate charge was removed.

What gives: The Cooks hit a hazard in the health care system after Frankie’s car struck that tree: More and more hospital systems own urgent care centers, which have limits on whom they treat – for both financial and medical reasons.

Russell was pretty upset after he received such a large bill, especially when he had tried to make a quick, inexpensive trip to the clinic. He said Frankie’s grandmother was seen at an urgent care center after a car wreck and walked out with a bill for just a few hundred dollars.

“That’s kind of what I was expecting,” he said. “She just really needed to be looked over.”

So why was Frankie turned away from an urgent care center?

Lou Ellen Horwitz, CEO of the Urgent Care Association, said it’s a pretty standard policy for urgent care centers not to treat injuries that result from car crashes, even minor ones. “Generally, as a rule, they do not take care of car accident victims regardless of the extent of their injuries, because it is going to go through that auto insurance claims process before the provider gets paid,” she said.

Ms. Horwitz said urgent care centers – even ones owned by big health systems – often operate on thin margins and can’t wait months and months for an auto insurance company to pay out a claim. She said “unfortunately” people tend to learn about such policies when they show up expecting care.

Fold in the complicated relationship between health and auto insurance companies and you have what Barak D. Richman, a health care policy professor at Duke University’s law school, called “the wildly complex world that we live in.”

“Each product has its own specifications about where to go and what it covers. Each one is incredibly difficult and complex to administer,” he said. “And each one imposes mistakes on the system.”

Atrium Health did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Frankie’s case.

Ms. Horwitz dismissed the idea that a health system might push people in car wrecks from urgent care centers to emergency rooms to make more money off them. Still, auto insurance generally pays more than health insurance for the same services.

Mr. Richman remained skeptical.

“At the risk of sounding a little too cynical, there are always dollar signs when a health care provider sees a patient come through the door,” Mr. Richman said.

Ateev Mehrotra, MD, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, Boston, said it was likely strategic for the urgent care center to be right down the street from the ER. Part of the strategy makes sense medically, he said, “because if a bad thing happens, you want to get them to some place with more skill really quickly.”

But he also said urgent care centers are “one of the most effective ways” for a health system to generate new revenue, creating a pipeline of new patients to visit its hospitals and later see doctors for testing and follow-up.

Dr. Mehrotra said urgent care centers are not bound by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law known as EMTALA that requires hospitals to stabilize patients regardless of their ability to pay.

At the time of Frankie’s visit, both the urgent care center and emergency room were owned by Floyd health system, which operated a handful of hospitals and clinics in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Since then, Floyd has merged with Atrium Health – a larger, North Carolina–based company that operates dozens of hospitals across the Southeast.

Frankie got a CT scan of her head and body in the emergency room, tests KHN confirmed she couldn’t have gotten at the urgent care center regardless of whether the test was medically necessary or just part of a protocol for people in car wrecks who complain of a headache.

Resolution: Sixteen months have passed since Frankie Cook’s hospital visit, and Russell has delayed paying any of the bill on advice he got from a family friend who’s an attorney. After insurance covered its share, the Cooks’ portion came to $1,042.

Getting to that number has been a frustrating process, Russell said. He heard about the initial $17,005 bill in a letter from a lawyer representing the hospital – another unnerving wrinkle of Frankie’s care resulting from the car wreck. The Cooks then had to pursue a lengthy appeal process to get a $5,200 duplicate charge removed from the bill.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Cooks’ insurer, paid $4,006 of the claim. It said in a statement that it’s “committed to providing access to high-quality medical care for our members. This matter was reviewed in accordance with our clinical guidelines, and the billed claims were processed accordingly.”

“It’s not going to put us out on the street,” Russell said of the $1,042 balance, “but we’ve got expenses like everybody else.”

He added, “I would have loved a $200 urgent care visit, but that ship has sailed.”

The takeaway: It’s important to remember that urgent care centers aren’t governed by the same laws as emergency rooms and that they can be more selective about whom they treat. Sometimes their reasons are financial, not clinical.

It’s not uncommon for urgent care centers – even ones in large health systems – to turn away people who have been in car wrecks because of the complications that car insurance settlements create.

Although urgent care visits are less expensive than going to an emergency room, the clinics often can’t offer the same level of care. And you might have to pay the cost of an urgent care visit just to find out you need follow-up care in the emergency room. Then you could be stuck with two bills.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

While great strides have been made in children’s leukemia care during the past 50 years, statistics have remained grim. For acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the most common type, 5-year survival rates were just 69% for children younger than 15 between 2009 and 2015. Patients who do survive past adolescence face high risks of future complications.

Specialists say the challenges hindering more progress include a lack of clinical research, an emphasis on competition over cooperation, and sparse insight into how best to adjust adult leukemia treatments to children. Now, a large clinical trial launched by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) seeks to revolutionize pediatric AML care by testing multiple experimental treatments across the globe. Its goal goes beyond simply boosting survival.

“Our project aims to find better treatments, more targeted treatments, that will leave children with fewer long-term health problems as adults. We want them to not just survive but thrive,” Gwen Nichols, MD, chief medical officer of LLS, said in an interview. “What we’ve had was not working for anybody. So we have to try a different approach.”

The LLS Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) Master Trial launched in spring of 2022. Seventy-five study locations from Nova Scotia to Hawaii are now recruiting patients up to age 22 with known or suspected relapsed/refractory AML, mixed phenotype acute leukemia, or relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The 5-year trial expects to recruit 960 participants in the United States and Canada. Clinics in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand also are taking part.

“Pediatric oncologists should know that PedAL, for the first time, is providing a cooperative, seamless way to interrogate [the genomics of] a child’s leukemia,” hematologist/oncologist Todd Cooper, DO, section chief of pediatric oncology at Seattle Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, said in an interview. “It is also providing a seamless and efficient way for children to be assigned to clinical trials that are going to be tailored towards a particular child’s leukemia. This is something that’s never been done.”

In North America, all trial participants with relapsed AML will undergo genetic sequencing for free as part of the screening process. Clinics “can’t always access genomic screening for their patients,” Dr. Nichols said. “We’re providing that even if they don’t participate in any other part of the trial, even if they go and get another available therapy or go on a different trial. We want them to know that this is available, and they will get the results. And if they’re looking for a trial when they get those results, we have trained oncology nurses who will help them navigate and find clinical trials.”

In PedAL itself, one subtrial is now in progress: An open-label phase 3 randomized multicenter analysis of whether the oral leukemia drug venetoclax combined with the intensive infused chemotherapy treatment FLA+GO (fludarabine, high-dose cytarabine, and gemtuzumab ozogamicin) will improve overall survival compared to FLA+GO alone. Ninety-eight subjects are expected to join the 5-year subtrial.

“We expect within the next year to open three or four different subtrials of targeted therapies for specific groups of patients,” E. Anders Kolb, MD, chief of oncology and hematology at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware and cochair of the PedAL trial, said in an interview. “Over the course of the next few years, we’re going to learn a lot about the natural history of relapsed leukemia – we don’t have a ton of data on that – and then how targeted therapies may alter some of those outcomes.”

Discussions with multiple drugmakers are in progress regarding the potential subtrials, he said.

The PedAL strategy addresses the lack of new drugs for children with AML, Seattle Children’s Dr. Cooper said. One main reason for the gap is that childhood leukemia is much less common than the adult form, he said, so a lot of drug development is geared toward adults. As a result, he said, new drugs “are geared towards adults whose leukemia is not as aggressive. Whereas in children, the acute leukemias, especially AML, are quite aggressive and need therapies that are often more intense.”

In addition, he said, “we have only recently become aware of how AML is biologically much different than in adults.”

In AML, Delaware’s Dr. Kolb explained, “there are many different phenotypes – ways that these cells can look and behave. But we treat them with a single regimen. What I like to tell families is that we’ve got a few tools in our toolbox, but they all happen to be sledgehammers. The key to the challenge in AML is that it is a molecular disease, but we’re treating it with therapies that were developed 40-50 years ago.”

In PedAL, the goal is to figure out the best ways to target therapy for the specific types that patients have. On this front, the genomic screening in the trial is crucial because it will identify which patients express certain targets and allow them to be assigned to appropriate sub-trials, Dr. Coooper said.

What’s next? “LLS has planned for this to be ongoing for the next 5 to 7 years, so that we can get a number of studies up and running,” Dr. Nichols said. “After that, those studies will continue. We will hope that most of them can be self-funded by then.”

As for cost, she noted that the PedAL trial is part of the society’s Dare to Dream Project, formerly known as the Children’s Initiative, which focuses on pediatric blood cancers. The project, with a fundraising goal of $175 million, focuses on research, patient services and survivorship.

”We have a whole range of services, travel assistance, copay programs and educational resources that doctors may want to use as a valid source of information,” she said. ‘When I was in practice, patients were always asking me, ‘Do you have anything I can read or take home to give my son something about his disease?’ LLS has good-quality, patient-level information for patients. We welcome people contacting us or going to our website and taking advantage of that for free.”

Dr. Nichols and Dr. Kolb report no disclosures. Dr. Cooper reports academic funding from LLS.

While great strides have been made in children’s leukemia care during the past 50 years, statistics have remained grim. For acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the most common type, 5-year survival rates were just 69% for children younger than 15 between 2009 and 2015. Patients who do survive past adolescence face high risks of future complications.

Specialists say the challenges hindering more progress include a lack of clinical research, an emphasis on competition over cooperation, and sparse insight into how best to adjust adult leukemia treatments to children. Now, a large clinical trial launched by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) seeks to revolutionize pediatric AML care by testing multiple experimental treatments across the globe. Its goal goes beyond simply boosting survival.

“Our project aims to find better treatments, more targeted treatments, that will leave children with fewer long-term health problems as adults. We want them to not just survive but thrive,” Gwen Nichols, MD, chief medical officer of LLS, said in an interview. “What we’ve had was not working for anybody. So we have to try a different approach.”

The LLS Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) Master Trial launched in spring of 2022. Seventy-five study locations from Nova Scotia to Hawaii are now recruiting patients up to age 22 with known or suspected relapsed/refractory AML, mixed phenotype acute leukemia, or relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The 5-year trial expects to recruit 960 participants in the United States and Canada. Clinics in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand also are taking part.

“Pediatric oncologists should know that PedAL, for the first time, is providing a cooperative, seamless way to interrogate [the genomics of] a child’s leukemia,” hematologist/oncologist Todd Cooper, DO, section chief of pediatric oncology at Seattle Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, said in an interview. “It is also providing a seamless and efficient way for children to be assigned to clinical trials that are going to be tailored towards a particular child’s leukemia. This is something that’s never been done.”

In North America, all trial participants with relapsed AML will undergo genetic sequencing for free as part of the screening process. Clinics “can’t always access genomic screening for their patients,” Dr. Nichols said. “We’re providing that even if they don’t participate in any other part of the trial, even if they go and get another available therapy or go on a different trial. We want them to know that this is available, and they will get the results. And if they’re looking for a trial when they get those results, we have trained oncology nurses who will help them navigate and find clinical trials.”

In PedAL itself, one subtrial is now in progress: An open-label phase 3 randomized multicenter analysis of whether the oral leukemia drug venetoclax combined with the intensive infused chemotherapy treatment FLA+GO (fludarabine, high-dose cytarabine, and gemtuzumab ozogamicin) will improve overall survival compared to FLA+GO alone. Ninety-eight subjects are expected to join the 5-year subtrial.

“We expect within the next year to open three or four different subtrials of targeted therapies for specific groups of patients,” E. Anders Kolb, MD, chief of oncology and hematology at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware and cochair of the PedAL trial, said in an interview. “Over the course of the next few years, we’re going to learn a lot about the natural history of relapsed leukemia – we don’t have a ton of data on that – and then how targeted therapies may alter some of those outcomes.”

Discussions with multiple drugmakers are in progress regarding the potential subtrials, he said.

The PedAL strategy addresses the lack of new drugs for children with AML, Seattle Children’s Dr. Cooper said. One main reason for the gap is that childhood leukemia is much less common than the adult form, he said, so a lot of drug development is geared toward adults. As a result, he said, new drugs “are geared towards adults whose leukemia is not as aggressive. Whereas in children, the acute leukemias, especially AML, are quite aggressive and need therapies that are often more intense.”

In addition, he said, “we have only recently become aware of how AML is biologically much different than in adults.”

In AML, Delaware’s Dr. Kolb explained, “there are many different phenotypes – ways that these cells can look and behave. But we treat them with a single regimen. What I like to tell families is that we’ve got a few tools in our toolbox, but they all happen to be sledgehammers. The key to the challenge in AML is that it is a molecular disease, but we’re treating it with therapies that were developed 40-50 years ago.”

In PedAL, the goal is to figure out the best ways to target therapy for the specific types that patients have. On this front, the genomic screening in the trial is crucial because it will identify which patients express certain targets and allow them to be assigned to appropriate sub-trials, Dr. Coooper said.

What’s next? “LLS has planned for this to be ongoing for the next 5 to 7 years, so that we can get a number of studies up and running,” Dr. Nichols said. “After that, those studies will continue. We will hope that most of them can be self-funded by then.”

As for cost, she noted that the PedAL trial is part of the society’s Dare to Dream Project, formerly known as the Children’s Initiative, which focuses on pediatric blood cancers. The project, with a fundraising goal of $175 million, focuses on research, patient services and survivorship.

”We have a whole range of services, travel assistance, copay programs and educational resources that doctors may want to use as a valid source of information,” she said. ‘When I was in practice, patients were always asking me, ‘Do you have anything I can read or take home to give my son something about his disease?’ LLS has good-quality, patient-level information for patients. We welcome people contacting us or going to our website and taking advantage of that for free.”

Dr. Nichols and Dr. Kolb report no disclosures. Dr. Cooper reports academic funding from LLS.

While great strides have been made in children’s leukemia care during the past 50 years, statistics have remained grim. For acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the most common type, 5-year survival rates were just 69% for children younger than 15 between 2009 and 2015. Patients who do survive past adolescence face high risks of future complications.

Specialists say the challenges hindering more progress include a lack of clinical research, an emphasis on competition over cooperation, and sparse insight into how best to adjust adult leukemia treatments to children. Now, a large clinical trial launched by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) seeks to revolutionize pediatric AML care by testing multiple experimental treatments across the globe. Its goal goes beyond simply boosting survival.

“Our project aims to find better treatments, more targeted treatments, that will leave children with fewer long-term health problems as adults. We want them to not just survive but thrive,” Gwen Nichols, MD, chief medical officer of LLS, said in an interview. “What we’ve had was not working for anybody. So we have to try a different approach.”

The LLS Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) Master Trial launched in spring of 2022. Seventy-five study locations from Nova Scotia to Hawaii are now recruiting patients up to age 22 with known or suspected relapsed/refractory AML, mixed phenotype acute leukemia, or relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The 5-year trial expects to recruit 960 participants in the United States and Canada. Clinics in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand also are taking part.

“Pediatric oncologists should know that PedAL, for the first time, is providing a cooperative, seamless way to interrogate [the genomics of] a child’s leukemia,” hematologist/oncologist Todd Cooper, DO, section chief of pediatric oncology at Seattle Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, said in an interview. “It is also providing a seamless and efficient way for children to be assigned to clinical trials that are going to be tailored towards a particular child’s leukemia. This is something that’s never been done.”

In North America, all trial participants with relapsed AML will undergo genetic sequencing for free as part of the screening process. Clinics “can’t always access genomic screening for their patients,” Dr. Nichols said. “We’re providing that even if they don’t participate in any other part of the trial, even if they go and get another available therapy or go on a different trial. We want them to know that this is available, and they will get the results. And if they’re looking for a trial when they get those results, we have trained oncology nurses who will help them navigate and find clinical trials.”

In PedAL itself, one subtrial is now in progress: An open-label phase 3 randomized multicenter analysis of whether the oral leukemia drug venetoclax combined with the intensive infused chemotherapy treatment FLA+GO (fludarabine, high-dose cytarabine, and gemtuzumab ozogamicin) will improve overall survival compared to FLA+GO alone. Ninety-eight subjects are expected to join the 5-year subtrial.

“We expect within the next year to open three or four different subtrials of targeted therapies for specific groups of patients,” E. Anders Kolb, MD, chief of oncology and hematology at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware and cochair of the PedAL trial, said in an interview. “Over the course of the next few years, we’re going to learn a lot about the natural history of relapsed leukemia – we don’t have a ton of data on that – and then how targeted therapies may alter some of those outcomes.”

Discussions with multiple drugmakers are in progress regarding the potential subtrials, he said.

The PedAL strategy addresses the lack of new drugs for children with AML, Seattle Children’s Dr. Cooper said. One main reason for the gap is that childhood leukemia is much less common than the adult form, he said, so a lot of drug development is geared toward adults. As a result, he said, new drugs “are geared towards adults whose leukemia is not as aggressive. Whereas in children, the acute leukemias, especially AML, are quite aggressive and need therapies that are often more intense.”

In addition, he said, “we have only recently become aware of how AML is biologically much different than in adults.”

In AML, Delaware’s Dr. Kolb explained, “there are many different phenotypes – ways that these cells can look and behave. But we treat them with a single regimen. What I like to tell families is that we’ve got a few tools in our toolbox, but they all happen to be sledgehammers. The key to the challenge in AML is that it is a molecular disease, but we’re treating it with therapies that were developed 40-50 years ago.”

In PedAL, the goal is to figure out the best ways to target therapy for the specific types that patients have. On this front, the genomic screening in the trial is crucial because it will identify which patients express certain targets and allow them to be assigned to appropriate sub-trials, Dr. Coooper said.

What’s next? “LLS has planned for this to be ongoing for the next 5 to 7 years, so that we can get a number of studies up and running,” Dr. Nichols said. “After that, those studies will continue. We will hope that most of them can be self-funded by then.”

As for cost, she noted that the PedAL trial is part of the society’s Dare to Dream Project, formerly known as the Children’s Initiative, which focuses on pediatric blood cancers. The project, with a fundraising goal of $175 million, focuses on research, patient services and survivorship.

”We have a whole range of services, travel assistance, copay programs and educational resources that doctors may want to use as a valid source of information,” she said. ‘When I was in practice, patients were always asking me, ‘Do you have anything I can read or take home to give my son something about his disease?’ LLS has good-quality, patient-level information for patients. We welcome people contacting us or going to our website and taking advantage of that for free.”

Dr. Nichols and Dr. Kolb report no disclosures. Dr. Cooper reports academic funding from LLS.

Black and Hispanic adults with spina bifida or cerebral palsy are less likely to attend wellness visits than are White adults with the same pediatric-onset disabilities, a new study finds.

Black adults also had lower odds of having a bone density screening, compared with White adults. Plus, comorbidities were highest among the Black patients, according to the paper, which was published in Annals of Family Medicine.

Elham Mahmoudi, PhD, and her coauthors examined private insurance claims from 11,635 patients with cerebral palsy (CP) or spina bifida over ten years from 2007 to 2017. The researchers analyzed comorbidities and compared the rates of different psychological, cardiometabolic, and musculoskeletal conditions among these patients.

Only 23% of Hispanic participants and 18% of Black participants attended an annual wellness visit, compared with 32% of the White participants.

Only 1% of Black and 2% of White participants received any bone density screening (odds ratio = 0.54, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.31-0.95), a service that is essential for catching a patient’s potential risk for osteoporosis and fractures.

According to the researchers, patients accessed services such as bone density scans, cholesterol assessments, diabetes screenings, and annual wellness visits less than recommended for people with those chronic conditions.

“People with spina bifida and cerebral palsy have complex care needs. We know through our work that chronic conditions are much higher among them compared with adults without disabilities,” Dr. Mahmoudi, associate professor in the department of family medicine at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said in an interview. “I was surprised to see even with private insurance, the rate of using preventative services is so low among White people and minority populations.”
 

Comorbidities highest in Black participants

Black adults had the highest comorbidity score of 2.5, and Hispanic adults had the lowest comorbidity score of 1.8. For White adults in the study, the comorbidity score was 2.0.

Osteoporosis, a common concern for people with spina bifida or cerebral palsy, was detected in around 4% of all participants. Osteoarthritis was detected in 13.38% of Black participants, versus 8.53% of Hispanic participants and 11.09% of White participants.

Diabetes and hypertension were more common among Black participants than among Hispanic and White participants. The percentages of Black patients with hypertension and diabetes were 16.5% and 39.89%, respectively. Among the Hispanic and White adults, the percentages with hypertension were 22.3% and 28.2%, respectively, according to the paper.
 

Disparities in access

Jamil Paden, racial and health equity manager at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, said getting access to literature, transportation, tables, chairs, weigh scales, and imaging equipment that accommodate the needs of people with disabilities are some of the biggest challenges for people with disabilities who are trying to receive care.

“It’s not a one size fits all, we have to recognize that if someone doesn’t see themselves in a particular place, then it makes it more challenging for them to feel comfortable speaking up and saying things about their health, which would prevent a person from saying something early on,” Mr. Paden said in an interview. “That particular issue will continue to grow and become more of a health risk, or health challenge down the line.”

Mr. Paden emphasized intersections between class, race, and circumstances which can, together, make health care less equitable for people with disabilities, especially in underserved communities and communities of color. He urged health care providers to distance their practices from a “one size fits all” approach to treatment and engage in their patients’ individual lives and communities.

“It’s not enough to just say, Hey, you have a disability. So let me treat your disability ... You have to recognize that although a patient may have a dire diagnosis, they also are a person of color, and they have to navigate different aspects of life from their counterparts,” he said.

Dr. Mahmoudi said patient and provider understanding of the disability is often lacking. She recommended advocating for patients, noting that giving both patients and providers the tools to further educate themselves and apply that to their regular visits is a good first step.

“Just having access to a facility doesn’t mean they will get the services they need. Preventative services that are recommended for people with disabilities differ from the general population. Providers should be educated about that and the patient needs to be educated about that,” she added.

“Patients who do not approach clinicians get lost in the system. Maybe many facilities are not disability friendly, or they need health literacy. If they don’t know they are at risk for osteoporosis, for example, then they won’t ask,” Dr. Mahmoudi said.

The study was funded by The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Dr. Mahmoudi and Mr. Paden report no relevant financial relationships.

Black and Hispanic adults with spina bifida or cerebral palsy are less likely to attend wellness visits than are White adults with the same pediatric-onset disabilities, a new study finds.

Black adults also had lower odds of having a bone density screening, compared with White adults. Plus, comorbidities were highest among the Black patients, according to the paper, which was published in Annals of Family Medicine.

Elham Mahmoudi, PhD, and her coauthors examined private insurance claims from 11,635 patients with cerebral palsy (CP) or spina bifida over ten years from 2007 to 2017. The researchers analyzed comorbidities and compared the rates of different psychological, cardiometabolic, and musculoskeletal conditions among these patients.

Only 23% of Hispanic participants and 18% of Black participants attended an annual wellness visit, compared with 32% of the White participants.

Only 1% of Black and 2% of White participants received any bone density screening (odds ratio = 0.54, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.31-0.95), a service that is essential for catching a patient’s potential risk for osteoporosis and fractures.

According to the researchers, patients accessed services such as bone density scans, cholesterol assessments, diabetes screenings, and annual wellness visits less than recommended for people with those chronic conditions.

“People with spina bifida and cerebral palsy have complex care needs. We know through our work that chronic conditions are much higher among them compared with adults without disabilities,” Dr. Mahmoudi, associate professor in the department of family medicine at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said in an interview. “I was surprised to see even with private insurance, the rate of using preventative services is so low among White people and minority populations.”
 

Comorbidities highest in Black participants

Black adults had the highest comorbidity score of 2.5, and Hispanic adults had the lowest comorbidity score of 1.8. For White adults in the study, the comorbidity score was 2.0.

Osteoporosis, a common concern for people with spina bifida or cerebral palsy, was detected in around 4% of all participants. Osteoarthritis was detected in 13.38% of Black participants, versus 8.53% of Hispanic participants and 11.09% of White participants.

Diabetes and hypertension were more common among Black participants than among Hispanic and White participants. The percentages of Black patients with hypertension and diabetes were 16.5% and 39.89%, respectively. Among the Hispanic and White adults, the percentages with hypertension were 22.3% and 28.2%, respectively, according to the paper.
 

Disparities in access

Jamil Paden, racial and health equity manager at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, said getting access to literature, transportation, tables, chairs, weigh scales, and imaging equipment that accommodate the needs of people with disabilities are some of the biggest challenges for people with disabilities who are trying to receive care.

“It’s not a one size fits all, we have to recognize that if someone doesn’t see themselves in a particular place, then it makes it more challenging for them to feel comfortable speaking up and saying things about their health, which would prevent a person from saying something early on,” Mr. Paden said in an interview. “That particular issue will continue to grow and become more of a health risk, or health challenge down the line.”

Mr. Paden emphasized intersections between class, race, and circumstances which can, together, make health care less equitable for people with disabilities, especially in underserved communities and communities of color. He urged health care providers to distance their practices from a “one size fits all” approach to treatment and engage in their patients’ individual lives and communities.

“It’s not enough to just say, Hey, you have a disability. So let me treat your disability ... You have to recognize that although a patient may have a dire diagnosis, they also are a person of color, and they have to navigate different aspects of life from their counterparts,” he said.

Dr. Mahmoudi said patient and provider understanding of the disability is often lacking. She recommended advocating for patients, noting that giving both patients and providers the tools to further educate themselves and apply that to their regular visits is a good first step.

“Just having access to a facility doesn’t mean they will get the services they need. Preventative services that are recommended for people with disabilities differ from the general population. Providers should be educated about that and the patient needs to be educated about that,” she added.

“Patients who do not approach clinicians get lost in the system. Maybe many facilities are not disability friendly, or they need health literacy. If they don’t know they are at risk for osteoporosis, for example, then they won’t ask,” Dr. Mahmoudi said.

The study was funded by The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Dr. Mahmoudi and Mr. Paden report no relevant financial relationships.

Black and Hispanic adults with spina bifida or cerebral palsy are less likely to attend wellness visits than are White adults with the same pediatric-onset disabilities, a new study finds.

Black adults also had lower odds of having a bone density screening, compared with White adults. Plus, comorbidities were highest among the Black patients, according to the paper, which was published in Annals of Family Medicine.

Elham Mahmoudi, PhD, and her coauthors examined private insurance claims from 11,635 patients with cerebral palsy (CP) or spina bifida over ten years from 2007 to 2017. The researchers analyzed comorbidities and compared the rates of different psychological, cardiometabolic, and musculoskeletal conditions among these patients.

Only 23% of Hispanic participants and 18% of Black participants attended an annual wellness visit, compared with 32% of the White participants.

Only 1% of Black and 2% of White participants received any bone density screening (odds ratio = 0.54, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.31-0.95), a service that is essential for catching a patient’s potential risk for osteoporosis and fractures.

According to the researchers, patients accessed services such as bone density scans, cholesterol assessments, diabetes screenings, and annual wellness visits less than recommended for people with those chronic conditions.

“People with spina bifida and cerebral palsy have complex care needs. We know through our work that chronic conditions are much higher among them compared with adults without disabilities,” Dr. Mahmoudi, associate professor in the department of family medicine at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said in an interview. “I was surprised to see even with private insurance, the rate of using preventative services is so low among White people and minority populations.”
 

Comorbidities highest in Black participants

Black adults had the highest comorbidity score of 2.5, and Hispanic adults had the lowest comorbidity score of 1.8. For White adults in the study, the comorbidity score was 2.0.

Osteoporosis, a common concern for people with spina bifida or cerebral palsy, was detected in around 4% of all participants. Osteoarthritis was detected in 13.38% of Black participants, versus 8.53% of Hispanic participants and 11.09% of White participants.

Diabetes and hypertension were more common among Black participants than among Hispanic and White participants. The percentages of Black patients with hypertension and diabetes were 16.5% and 39.89%, respectively. Among the Hispanic and White adults, the percentages with hypertension were 22.3% and 28.2%, respectively, according to the paper.
 

Disparities in access

Jamil Paden, racial and health equity manager at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, said getting access to literature, transportation, tables, chairs, weigh scales, and imaging equipment that accommodate the needs of people with disabilities are some of the biggest challenges for people with disabilities who are trying to receive care.

“It’s not a one size fits all, we have to recognize that if someone doesn’t see themselves in a particular place, then it makes it more challenging for them to feel comfortable speaking up and saying things about their health, which would prevent a person from saying something early on,” Mr. Paden said in an interview. “That particular issue will continue to grow and become more of a health risk, or health challenge down the line.”

Mr. Paden emphasized intersections between class, race, and circumstances which can, together, make health care less equitable for people with disabilities, especially in underserved communities and communities of color. He urged health care providers to distance their practices from a “one size fits all” approach to treatment and engage in their patients’ individual lives and communities.

“It’s not enough to just say, Hey, you have a disability. So let me treat your disability ... You have to recognize that although a patient may have a dire diagnosis, they also are a person of color, and they have to navigate different aspects of life from their counterparts,” he said.

Dr. Mahmoudi said patient and provider understanding of the disability is often lacking. She recommended advocating for patients, noting that giving both patients and providers the tools to further educate themselves and apply that to their regular visits is a good first step.

“Just having access to a facility doesn’t mean they will get the services they need. Preventative services that are recommended for people with disabilities differ from the general population. Providers should be educated about that and the patient needs to be educated about that,” she added.

“Patients who do not approach clinicians get lost in the system. Maybe many facilities are not disability friendly, or they need health literacy. If they don’t know they are at risk for osteoporosis, for example, then they won’t ask,” Dr. Mahmoudi said.

The study was funded by The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Dr. Mahmoudi and Mr. Paden report no relevant financial relationships.

Employed physicians are often torn. Many relish the steady salary and ability to focus on being a physician rather than handle administrative duties, but they bemoan their employers’ rules and their lack of input into key decisions. And thus, many doctors are leaving employment to start a private practice. For this article, seven physicians talked about why they chose private practice.

Leaving employment is ‘an invigorating time’

On Sept. 9, Aaron Przybysz, MD, gave notice to his employer, a large academic medical center in Southern California, that he would be leaving to start a private practice.

“It’s an invigorating time,” said Dr. Przybysz, 41, an anesthesiologist and pain management physician who plans to open his new pain management practice on Dec. 1 in Orange County. He has picked out the space he will rent but has not yet hired his staff.

“I’ve been serious about doing this for at least a year,” Dr. Przybysz said. “What held me back is the concern that my business could fail. But even if that happens, what’s the worst that could occur? I’d have to find a new job as an employed physician.

“I feel comfortable with the business side of medicine,” he said. His father was an executive in the automotive industry and his father-in-law is an entrepreneur in construction and housing.

“One of the biggest reasons for moving to private practice is making sure I don’t miss my kids’ activities,” he said, referring to his children, ages 9 and 7. Recently, he said, “I had to spend the whole weekend on call in the hospital. I came home and had to sleep most of the next day.

“I love the people that I have been working with and I’ve learned and matured as a physician during that time,” he said. “But it was time to move on.”
 

The desire to be in charge

In Medscape’s recent Employed Physicians Report, doctors said they enjoy the steady salary and ability to focus on patients, which comes with being employed.

Other physicians feel differently. John Machata, MD, a solo family physician in the village of Wickford, R.I., 20 miles south of Providence, chose private practice because “I have total control,” he said. “I make decisions that I couldn’t have made as an employed physician, such as closing my practice to new patients.”

He can also decide on his work hours. “I see patients for 35 hours, 4 days a week and then I have a 3-day weekend.” In a large organization, “the focus is on revenue,” said Dr. Machata. “They’re always measuring your productivity. If you are slower, you won’t make enough money for them.”

When he worked for a large group practice about a decade ago, “I felt burnt out every day,” he said. “I had to see patients every 10 minutes, with no breaks for anything in between. Within a month I was devising my exit strategy.”

Dr. Machata maintains long appointments – 25 minutes for a typical follow-up visit and 55 minutes for an annual check-in – but he still earns above the state average for primary care doctors. “I have no nurse or front-office staff, which means I can save $125,000 to $150,000 a year,” he said.  

In 2018, for the first time, employed physicians outnumbered self-employed physicians, according to a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA). By the end of 2021, more than half (52.1%) of U.S. physicians were employed by hospitals or health systems.

Yet the negatives of employment have begun to turn some physicians back toward private practice. Many physicians who were employed by a hospital or a large practice have become disillusioned and want to return to private practice.
 

His practice is the ‘best of both worlds’

Adam Bruggeman, MD, a 42-year-old spine surgeon who is CEO of Texas Spine Care Center, a solo practice in San Antonio, said he has “the best of both worlds.”

“As a solo physician, I have total control over how I practice,” he said. “But I also have access to value-based contracts and the data and staff needed to implement them.

“You need a lot of administrative overhead to take on these contracts, which a private practice normally doesn’t have,” he said. But Dr. Bruggeman gets this work done through a clinically integrated network (CIN) of private practices, Spinalytics of Texas, where he is chief medical director.

The CIN represents 150 musculoskeletal care providers and provides access to bundled networks, such as a total joint bundle with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as fee-for-service contracts.

He is also building a new ambulatory surgery center (ASC) that is scheduled to open in January. There, he plans to perform total joint and spine surgeries at a lower cost than at the hospital, which will be useful for value-based contracts through the CIN.

Dr. Bruggeman said it would be hard to run his private practice without the CIN and the ASC. “Private practice has changed,” he said. “The days of hanging up a shingle and immediately being successful are gone. You’ve got to be smart about business to run a successful practice.”
 

He started his practice while the pandemic raged

Joe Greene, MD, 42, an orthopedic surgeon in Louisville, Ky., had to open his hip and knee surgery practice when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging a year and a half ago, but that did not stop him.

“Federal financing of small bank loans completely stopped, but that only amounted to a small delay because our bank took care of it,” said Dr. Greene, who codirects his new practice with another orthopedic surgeon.

Even during the pandemic, “we could be very nimble,” he said. “For instance, when we want to institute new technology or a new patient-centric educational platform, we can do it immediately rather than going through an approval process at a health system.”

The partners, both ex-employees of a health system, also have an ASC, which allows them better control over their surgery schedules. “At a hospital, you can be bumped from the schedule by other surgeries, and you can’t be as productive as an ASC in the number of surgeries per day,” he said.

Dr. Greene attributes the practice’s success to long and careful planning. “We had to learn about business,” he said. “We did 3 to 4 years of research to find the right business model and implement it.”

As they were considering the new practice, a survey of patients showed that more than 75% chose them by word-of-mouth – because they specialize in complex and revision surgeries – rather than through referrals within their health system. This meant they could survive without their employer.

Planning for the new practice took up all his free time, but now he can relax and spend time with his three daughters, ages 12, 10, and 8. Dr. Greene currently coaches two of their teams. “We’re loving it,” he said.
 

Colleagues want to know how he did it

Clinton Sheets, MD, an ophthalmologist in Hudson and Clearwater, Fla., went solo in 2019 after being in a group practice for 11 years. Since he opened up, “I get phone calls from colleagues all the time, asking me about how I did it,” he said. “At least two of them followed in my footsteps.

“I tell them it’s very doable,” he said. “If you have the motivation, you can do it. Depending on your competence, you can outsource as much or as little as you want. Some management companies can do almost all of the nonclinical work for you.

“Smaller practices can streamline processes because they have a flatter organizational structure and have fewer issues with administrative bloat than larger organizations,” he said.

“Technology hinders and helps a private practice,” he said. On the one hand, he had to buy a lot of expensive equipment that otherwise would be shared by a group of doctors. On the other hand, using the cloud makes it possible to easily store practice management software and the electronic health record. 
 

He’s opening a private practice while staying employed

In December, Dev Basu, MD, a hospitalist in Baltimore, plans to start his own private practice, seeing patients in skilled nursing homes, while still working as a nocturnist in a large health care system.  

He said his employer has been supportive of his plans. “My work will not directly compete with them and it will benefit them by serving patients discharged from their hospitals,” said Dr. Basu, 38. He added, however, that he will be allowed to work only at certain facilities, and these will be subject to annual review.

“The financial risk of the new practice is low, because I haven’t had to invest much,” he said. “I won’t have a staff or an office.” He plans to maintain his full schedule as an employee, working 12 nights a month, because it will give him a great deal of time to do the new work.

“I also have no particular interest in running a business,” he said. “I come from a family of doctors, professors, and teachers who never ran a business. But I’m willing to learn so that I can practice medicine the way I want to.

“The ability to set my own schedule and deal with patients in the way I think is best is very important to me,” he said.
 

Private practitioners don’t have to face ‘moral distress’

One thing private practitioners typically don’t have to contend with is “moral distress,” which occurs when you have to follow institutional concerns on how much time you can spend with a patient or on the need to keep referrals in-house, according to Marie T. Brown, MD.

Dr. Brown is an internist who ran a small private practice in Oak Park, Ill., and is now the physician lead for the American Medical Association’s STEPS Forward program, which provides strategies on how to improve a medical practice.

“In my private practice, I could control the time I spent with each patient,” she said. “I also had control over my schedule. If I didn’t have the time, I just took a lower income, but that was okay.”

Dr. Brown said it is a myth that employment offers a better work-life balance. “Young physicians who take employment for this reason may find that they’re not allowed to drop off and pick up their children from school at a certain time. But you can do that in a private practice.”

She said it’s not that hard to run a practice. “Young physicians don’t think they could run a practice because they don’t have any business skills,” she said. “Yes, you do need some management skills, and you have to devote time to management. But you don’t need to have special expertise. You can outsource much of the work.”
 

A growing trend?

David J. Zetter, a consultant in Mechanicsburg, Pa., who helps doctors set up private practices, sees more interest in this in the past 5 years. “The overwhelming trend used to be private practices being bought up by hospitals and other entities,” he said. “Now we’re seeing the pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

“Generally, these doctors are fed up with being employed at a large organization,” he added. “Recently I got a call from a doctor who had never thought about running his own business, but he’s had it with being an employed physician.”

Switching to private practice is scary for a lot of them, but the alternative is worse. “A podiatrist I’m working with tells me she is scared to death about setting up a private practice, but she’s doing it because she doesn’t want to be employed anymore,” Mr. Zetter said.

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

Employed physicians are often torn. Many relish the steady salary and ability to focus on being a physician rather than handle administrative duties, but they bemoan their employers’ rules and their lack of input into key decisions. And thus, many doctors are leaving employment to start a private practice. For this article, seven physicians talked about why they chose private practice.

Leaving employment is ‘an invigorating time’

On Sept. 9, Aaron Przybysz, MD, gave notice to his employer, a large academic medical center in Southern California, that he would be leaving to start a private practice.

“It’s an invigorating time,” said Dr. Przybysz, 41, an anesthesiologist and pain management physician who plans to open his new pain management practice on Dec. 1 in Orange County. He has picked out the space he will rent but has not yet hired his staff.

“I’ve been serious about doing this for at least a year,” Dr. Przybysz said. “What held me back is the concern that my business could fail. But even if that happens, what’s the worst that could occur? I’d have to find a new job as an employed physician.

“I feel comfortable with the business side of medicine,” he said. His father was an executive in the automotive industry and his father-in-law is an entrepreneur in construction and housing.

“One of the biggest reasons for moving to private practice is making sure I don’t miss my kids’ activities,” he said, referring to his children, ages 9 and 7. Recently, he said, “I had to spend the whole weekend on call in the hospital. I came home and had to sleep most of the next day.

“I love the people that I have been working with and I’ve learned and matured as a physician during that time,” he said. “But it was time to move on.”
 

The desire to be in charge

In Medscape’s recent Employed Physicians Report, doctors said they enjoy the steady salary and ability to focus on patients, which comes with being employed.

Other physicians feel differently. John Machata, MD, a solo family physician in the village of Wickford, R.I., 20 miles south of Providence, chose private practice because “I have total control,” he said. “I make decisions that I couldn’t have made as an employed physician, such as closing my practice to new patients.”

He can also decide on his work hours. “I see patients for 35 hours, 4 days a week and then I have a 3-day weekend.” In a large organization, “the focus is on revenue,” said Dr. Machata. “They’re always measuring your productivity. If you are slower, you won’t make enough money for them.”

When he worked for a large group practice about a decade ago, “I felt burnt out every day,” he said. “I had to see patients every 10 minutes, with no breaks for anything in between. Within a month I was devising my exit strategy.”

Dr. Machata maintains long appointments – 25 minutes for a typical follow-up visit and 55 minutes for an annual check-in – but he still earns above the state average for primary care doctors. “I have no nurse or front-office staff, which means I can save $125,000 to $150,000 a year,” he said.  

In 2018, for the first time, employed physicians outnumbered self-employed physicians, according to a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA). By the end of 2021, more than half (52.1%) of U.S. physicians were employed by hospitals or health systems.

Yet the negatives of employment have begun to turn some physicians back toward private practice. Many physicians who were employed by a hospital or a large practice have become disillusioned and want to return to private practice.
 

His practice is the ‘best of both worlds’

Adam Bruggeman, MD, a 42-year-old spine surgeon who is CEO of Texas Spine Care Center, a solo practice in San Antonio, said he has “the best of both worlds.”

“As a solo physician, I have total control over how I practice,” he said. “But I also have access to value-based contracts and the data and staff needed to implement them.

“You need a lot of administrative overhead to take on these contracts, which a private practice normally doesn’t have,” he said. But Dr. Bruggeman gets this work done through a clinically integrated network (CIN) of private practices, Spinalytics of Texas, where he is chief medical director.

The CIN represents 150 musculoskeletal care providers and provides access to bundled networks, such as a total joint bundle with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as fee-for-service contracts.

He is also building a new ambulatory surgery center (ASC) that is scheduled to open in January. There, he plans to perform total joint and spine surgeries at a lower cost than at the hospital, which will be useful for value-based contracts through the CIN.

Dr. Bruggeman said it would be hard to run his private practice without the CIN and the ASC. “Private practice has changed,” he said. “The days of hanging up a shingle and immediately being successful are gone. You’ve got to be smart about business to run a successful practice.”
 

He started his practice while the pandemic raged

Joe Greene, MD, 42, an orthopedic surgeon in Louisville, Ky., had to open his hip and knee surgery practice when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging a year and a half ago, but that did not stop him.

“Federal financing of small bank loans completely stopped, but that only amounted to a small delay because our bank took care of it,” said Dr. Greene, who codirects his new practice with another orthopedic surgeon.

Even during the pandemic, “we could be very nimble,” he said. “For instance, when we want to institute new technology or a new patient-centric educational platform, we can do it immediately rather than going through an approval process at a health system.”

The partners, both ex-employees of a health system, also have an ASC, which allows them better control over their surgery schedules. “At a hospital, you can be bumped from the schedule by other surgeries, and you can’t be as productive as an ASC in the number of surgeries per day,” he said.

Dr. Greene attributes the practice’s success to long and careful planning. “We had to learn about business,” he said. “We did 3 to 4 years of research to find the right business model and implement it.”

As they were considering the new practice, a survey of patients showed that more than 75% chose them by word-of-mouth – because they specialize in complex and revision surgeries – rather than through referrals within their health system. This meant they could survive without their employer.

Planning for the new practice took up all his free time, but now he can relax and spend time with his three daughters, ages 12, 10, and 8. Dr. Greene currently coaches two of their teams. “We’re loving it,” he said.
 

Colleagues want to know how he did it

Clinton Sheets, MD, an ophthalmologist in Hudson and Clearwater, Fla., went solo in 2019 after being in a group practice for 11 years. Since he opened up, “I get phone calls from colleagues all the time, asking me about how I did it,” he said. “At least two of them followed in my footsteps.

“I tell them it’s very doable,” he said. “If you have the motivation, you can do it. Depending on your competence, you can outsource as much or as little as you want. Some management companies can do almost all of the nonclinical work for you.

“Smaller practices can streamline processes because they have a flatter organizational structure and have fewer issues with administrative bloat than larger organizations,” he said.

“Technology hinders and helps a private practice,” he said. On the one hand, he had to buy a lot of expensive equipment that otherwise would be shared by a group of doctors. On the other hand, using the cloud makes it possible to easily store practice management software and the electronic health record. 
 

He’s opening a private practice while staying employed

In December, Dev Basu, MD, a hospitalist in Baltimore, plans to start his own private practice, seeing patients in skilled nursing homes, while still working as a nocturnist in a large health care system.  

He said his employer has been supportive of his plans. “My work will not directly compete with them and it will benefit them by serving patients discharged from their hospitals,” said Dr. Basu, 38. He added, however, that he will be allowed to work only at certain facilities, and these will be subject to annual review.

“The financial risk of the new practice is low, because I haven’t had to invest much,” he said. “I won’t have a staff or an office.” He plans to maintain his full schedule as an employee, working 12 nights a month, because it will give him a great deal of time to do the new work.

“I also have no particular interest in running a business,” he said. “I come from a family of doctors, professors, and teachers who never ran a business. But I’m willing to learn so that I can practice medicine the way I want to.

“The ability to set my own schedule and deal with patients in the way I think is best is very important to me,” he said.
 

Private practitioners don’t have to face ‘moral distress’

One thing private practitioners typically don’t have to contend with is “moral distress,” which occurs when you have to follow institutional concerns on how much time you can spend with a patient or on the need to keep referrals in-house, according to Marie T. Brown, MD.

Dr. Brown is an internist who ran a small private practice in Oak Park, Ill., and is now the physician lead for the American Medical Association’s STEPS Forward program, which provides strategies on how to improve a medical practice.

“In my private practice, I could control the time I spent with each patient,” she said. “I also had control over my schedule. If I didn’t have the time, I just took a lower income, but that was okay.”

Dr. Brown said it is a myth that employment offers a better work-life balance. “Young physicians who take employment for this reason may find that they’re not allowed to drop off and pick up their children from school at a certain time. But you can do that in a private practice.”

She said it’s not that hard to run a practice. “Young physicians don’t think they could run a practice because they don’t have any business skills,” she said. “Yes, you do need some management skills, and you have to devote time to management. But you don’t need to have special expertise. You can outsource much of the work.”
 

A growing trend?

David J. Zetter, a consultant in Mechanicsburg, Pa., who helps doctors set up private practices, sees more interest in this in the past 5 years. “The overwhelming trend used to be private practices being bought up by hospitals and other entities,” he said. “Now we’re seeing the pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

“Generally, these doctors are fed up with being employed at a large organization,” he added. “Recently I got a call from a doctor who had never thought about running his own business, but he’s had it with being an employed physician.”

Switching to private practice is scary for a lot of them, but the alternative is worse. “A podiatrist I’m working with tells me she is scared to death about setting up a private practice, but she’s doing it because she doesn’t want to be employed anymore,” Mr. Zetter said.

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

Employed physicians are often torn. Many relish the steady salary and ability to focus on being a physician rather than handle administrative duties, but they bemoan their employers’ rules and their lack of input into key decisions. And thus, many doctors are leaving employment to start a private practice. For this article, seven physicians talked about why they chose private practice.

Leaving employment is ‘an invigorating time’

On Sept. 9, Aaron Przybysz, MD, gave notice to his employer, a large academic medical center in Southern California, that he would be leaving to start a private practice.

“It’s an invigorating time,” said Dr. Przybysz, 41, an anesthesiologist and pain management physician who plans to open his new pain management practice on Dec. 1 in Orange County. He has picked out the space he will rent but has not yet hired his staff.

“I’ve been serious about doing this for at least a year,” Dr. Przybysz said. “What held me back is the concern that my business could fail. But even if that happens, what’s the worst that could occur? I’d have to find a new job as an employed physician.

“I feel comfortable with the business side of medicine,” he said. His father was an executive in the automotive industry and his father-in-law is an entrepreneur in construction and housing.

“One of the biggest reasons for moving to private practice is making sure I don’t miss my kids’ activities,” he said, referring to his children, ages 9 and 7. Recently, he said, “I had to spend the whole weekend on call in the hospital. I came home and had to sleep most of the next day.

“I love the people that I have been working with and I’ve learned and matured as a physician during that time,” he said. “But it was time to move on.”
 

The desire to be in charge

In Medscape’s recent Employed Physicians Report, doctors said they enjoy the steady salary and ability to focus on patients, which comes with being employed.

Other physicians feel differently. John Machata, MD, a solo family physician in the village of Wickford, R.I., 20 miles south of Providence, chose private practice because “I have total control,” he said. “I make decisions that I couldn’t have made as an employed physician, such as closing my practice to new patients.”

He can also decide on his work hours. “I see patients for 35 hours, 4 days a week and then I have a 3-day weekend.” In a large organization, “the focus is on revenue,” said Dr. Machata. “They’re always measuring your productivity. If you are slower, you won’t make enough money for them.”

When he worked for a large group practice about a decade ago, “I felt burnt out every day,” he said. “I had to see patients every 10 minutes, with no breaks for anything in between. Within a month I was devising my exit strategy.”

Dr. Machata maintains long appointments – 25 minutes for a typical follow-up visit and 55 minutes for an annual check-in – but he still earns above the state average for primary care doctors. “I have no nurse or front-office staff, which means I can save $125,000 to $150,000 a year,” he said.  

In 2018, for the first time, employed physicians outnumbered self-employed physicians, according to a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA). By the end of 2021, more than half (52.1%) of U.S. physicians were employed by hospitals or health systems.

Yet the negatives of employment have begun to turn some physicians back toward private practice. Many physicians who were employed by a hospital or a large practice have become disillusioned and want to return to private practice.
 

His practice is the ‘best of both worlds’

Adam Bruggeman, MD, a 42-year-old spine surgeon who is CEO of Texas Spine Care Center, a solo practice in San Antonio, said he has “the best of both worlds.”

“As a solo physician, I have total control over how I practice,” he said. “But I also have access to value-based contracts and the data and staff needed to implement them.

“You need a lot of administrative overhead to take on these contracts, which a private practice normally doesn’t have,” he said. But Dr. Bruggeman gets this work done through a clinically integrated network (CIN) of private practices, Spinalytics of Texas, where he is chief medical director.

The CIN represents 150 musculoskeletal care providers and provides access to bundled networks, such as a total joint bundle with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as fee-for-service contracts.

He is also building a new ambulatory surgery center (ASC) that is scheduled to open in January. There, he plans to perform total joint and spine surgeries at a lower cost than at the hospital, which will be useful for value-based contracts through the CIN.

Dr. Bruggeman said it would be hard to run his private practice without the CIN and the ASC. “Private practice has changed,” he said. “The days of hanging up a shingle and immediately being successful are gone. You’ve got to be smart about business to run a successful practice.”
 

He started his practice while the pandemic raged

Joe Greene, MD, 42, an orthopedic surgeon in Louisville, Ky., had to open his hip and knee surgery practice when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging a year and a half ago, but that did not stop him.

“Federal financing of small bank loans completely stopped, but that only amounted to a small delay because our bank took care of it,” said Dr. Greene, who codirects his new practice with another orthopedic surgeon.

Even during the pandemic, “we could be very nimble,” he said. “For instance, when we want to institute new technology or a new patient-centric educational platform, we can do it immediately rather than going through an approval process at a health system.”

The partners, both ex-employees of a health system, also have an ASC, which allows them better control over their surgery schedules. “At a hospital, you can be bumped from the schedule by other surgeries, and you can’t be as productive as an ASC in the number of surgeries per day,” he said.

Dr. Greene attributes the practice’s success to long and careful planning. “We had to learn about business,” he said. “We did 3 to 4 years of research to find the right business model and implement it.”

As they were considering the new practice, a survey of patients showed that more than 75% chose them by word-of-mouth – because they specialize in complex and revision surgeries – rather than through referrals within their health system. This meant they could survive without their employer.

Planning for the new practice took up all his free time, but now he can relax and spend time with his three daughters, ages 12, 10, and 8. Dr. Greene currently coaches two of their teams. “We’re loving it,” he said.
 

Colleagues want to know how he did it

Clinton Sheets, MD, an ophthalmologist in Hudson and Clearwater, Fla., went solo in 2019 after being in a group practice for 11 years. Since he opened up, “I get phone calls from colleagues all the time, asking me about how I did it,” he said. “At least two of them followed in my footsteps.

“I tell them it’s very doable,” he said. “If you have the motivation, you can do it. Depending on your competence, you can outsource as much or as little as you want. Some management companies can do almost all of the nonclinical work for you.

“Smaller practices can streamline processes because they have a flatter organizational structure and have fewer issues with administrative bloat than larger organizations,” he said.

“Technology hinders and helps a private practice,” he said. On the one hand, he had to buy a lot of expensive equipment that otherwise would be shared by a group of doctors. On the other hand, using the cloud makes it possible to easily store practice management software and the electronic health record. 
 

He’s opening a private practice while staying employed

In December, Dev Basu, MD, a hospitalist in Baltimore, plans to start his own private practice, seeing patients in skilled nursing homes, while still working as a nocturnist in a large health care system.  

He said his employer has been supportive of his plans. “My work will not directly compete with them and it will benefit them by serving patients discharged from their hospitals,” said Dr. Basu, 38. He added, however, that he will be allowed to work only at certain facilities, and these will be subject to annual review.

“The financial risk of the new practice is low, because I haven’t had to invest much,” he said. “I won’t have a staff or an office.” He plans to maintain his full schedule as an employee, working 12 nights a month, because it will give him a great deal of time to do the new work.

“I also have no particular interest in running a business,” he said. “I come from a family of doctors, professors, and teachers who never ran a business. But I’m willing to learn so that I can practice medicine the way I want to.

“The ability to set my own schedule and deal with patients in the way I think is best is very important to me,” he said.
 

Private practitioners don’t have to face ‘moral distress’

One thing private practitioners typically don’t have to contend with is “moral distress,” which occurs when you have to follow institutional concerns on how much time you can spend with a patient or on the need to keep referrals in-house, according to Marie T. Brown, MD.

Dr. Brown is an internist who ran a small private practice in Oak Park, Ill., and is now the physician lead for the American Medical Association’s STEPS Forward program, which provides strategies on how to improve a medical practice.

“In my private practice, I could control the time I spent with each patient,” she said. “I also had control over my schedule. If I didn’t have the time, I just took a lower income, but that was okay.”

Dr. Brown said it is a myth that employment offers a better work-life balance. “Young physicians who take employment for this reason may find that they’re not allowed to drop off and pick up their children from school at a certain time. But you can do that in a private practice.”

She said it’s not that hard to run a practice. “Young physicians don’t think they could run a practice because they don’t have any business skills,” she said. “Yes, you do need some management skills, and you have to devote time to management. But you don’t need to have special expertise. You can outsource much of the work.”
 

A growing trend?

David J. Zetter, a consultant in Mechanicsburg, Pa., who helps doctors set up private practices, sees more interest in this in the past 5 years. “The overwhelming trend used to be private practices being bought up by hospitals and other entities,” he said. “Now we’re seeing the pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

“Generally, these doctors are fed up with being employed at a large organization,” he added. “Recently I got a call from a doctor who had never thought about running his own business, but he’s had it with being an employed physician.”

Switching to private practice is scary for a lot of them, but the alternative is worse. “A podiatrist I’m working with tells me she is scared to death about setting up a private practice, but she’s doing it because she doesn’t want to be employed anymore,” Mr. Zetter said.

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

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is characterized by receptive or expressive language difficulties or both. Children with the neurodevelopmental condition “struggle to comprehend and use their native language for no obvious reason,” said the authors of a new study. This leads to problems with grammar, vocabulary, and holding conversations, and in turn an increased risk of “difficulties when learning to read, underachieving academically, being unemployed, and facing social and mental health challenges.”

The condition is common and estimated to affect 7% of children – approximately two in every classroom – but is “underrecognized” said the authors.

Saloni Krishnan, PhD, reader at Royal Holloway, University of London, who led the study as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England, explained: “DLD is a relatively unknown and understudied condition, unlike better known neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, or autism.”

It is suspected that children with DLD may have differences in areas of the brain involved with learning habits and rules. “Although we know that DLD does not result from gross neural lesions, we still do not have a clear picture of how brain anatomy differs in children with DLD,” the authors highlighted.
 

Language learning difficulties linked to brain differences

For their study, published in eLife, researchers used an MRI technique called multiparameter mapping (MPM) to investigate microstructural neural differences in children with DLD. The technique measures the properties of brain tissue and is particularly useful for measuring the amounts of myelin.

“Understanding the neural basis of DLD is particularly challenging given the developmental nature of the disorder, as well as the lack of animal models for understanding language,” explained the authors. However, they pointed out that MPM allows an “unparalleled in vivo method” to investigate microstructural neural changes in children with DLD.

Kate Watkins, PhD, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford and senior author, said: “This type of scan tells us more about the makeup or composition of the brain tissue in different areas.”

As part of the Oxford Brain Organisation in Language Development (OxBOLD) study, the researchers recruited and tested 175 children between the ages of 10 and 15 years. Subsequently, 56 children with typical language development and 33 children with DLD were scanned using MPM.

The researchers compared the two groups and found that children with DLD have less myelin in parts of the brain responsible for speaking, listening, and learning rules and habits.

Specifically, maps of magnetization transfer saturation (MTsat) – which index myelin – in children with DLD showed reductions in MTsat values in the caudate nucleus bilaterally, and in the left ventral sensorimotor cortex and Heschl’s gyrus.

“Our findings using this protocol suggest that the caudate nucleus, as well as regions in the wider speech and language network, show alterations in myelin in children with DLD,” explained the authors.

“Given myelin’s role in enabling fast and reliable communication in the brain, reduced myelin content may explain why children with DLD struggle with speech and language processing,” they highlighted.
 

Significant advance in DLD understanding

The study findings established changes in striatal and cortical myelin as a “neural basis for DLD,” explained the journal editor, who highlighted that this was a “significant advance” in the understanding of DLD. “These brain differences may explain the poorer language outcomes in this group,” the authors said.

The findings “strongly point” to a role for the striatum in the development of DLD, and this role is likely to be in the “learning of habits and sequences,” the authors said.

They pointed out, however, that myelin patterns can change over development, and that myelination can be observed after successful training. “It is important to assess whether these differences in myelin persist over development in DLD, and if they can be targeted through training using behavioral interventions,” they emphasized.

Professor Watkins commented: “The findings might help us understand the pathways involved at a biological level and ultimately allow us to explain why children with DLD have problems with language learning.”

A spokesperson for the RADLD (Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder) organization, commented: “Developmental language disorder has long been understood to have a neurological basis; however, these differences in the brain development have received limited attention in research.” It added that utilizing new technology helps to better understand the “potential neurological differences” experienced by people with DLD.

More studies are needed to determine if these brain differences cause language problems and how or if experiencing language difficulties could cause these changes in the brain, explained the authors. They hoped that further research may help scientists find new treatments that target these brain differences.

Funding was provided by UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome Trust. The authors declared no competing interests.

A version of this article first appeared on MedscapeUK.

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is characterized by receptive or expressive language difficulties or both. Children with the neurodevelopmental condition “struggle to comprehend and use their native language for no obvious reason,” said the authors of a new study. This leads to problems with grammar, vocabulary, and holding conversations, and in turn an increased risk of “difficulties when learning to read, underachieving academically, being unemployed, and facing social and mental health challenges.”

The condition is common and estimated to affect 7% of children – approximately two in every classroom – but is “underrecognized” said the authors.

Saloni Krishnan, PhD, reader at Royal Holloway, University of London, who led the study as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England, explained: “DLD is a relatively unknown and understudied condition, unlike better known neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, or autism.”

It is suspected that children with DLD may have differences in areas of the brain involved with learning habits and rules. “Although we know that DLD does not result from gross neural lesions, we still do not have a clear picture of how brain anatomy differs in children with DLD,” the authors highlighted.
 

Language learning difficulties linked to brain differences

For their study, published in eLife, researchers used an MRI technique called multiparameter mapping (MPM) to investigate microstructural neural differences in children with DLD. The technique measures the properties of brain tissue and is particularly useful for measuring the amounts of myelin.

“Understanding the neural basis of DLD is particularly challenging given the developmental nature of the disorder, as well as the lack of animal models for understanding language,” explained the authors. However, they pointed out that MPM allows an “unparalleled in vivo method” to investigate microstructural neural changes in children with DLD.

Kate Watkins, PhD, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford and senior author, said: “This type of scan tells us more about the makeup or composition of the brain tissue in different areas.”

As part of the Oxford Brain Organisation in Language Development (OxBOLD) study, the researchers recruited and tested 175 children between the ages of 10 and 15 years. Subsequently, 56 children with typical language development and 33 children with DLD were scanned using MPM.

The researchers compared the two groups and found that children with DLD have less myelin in parts of the brain responsible for speaking, listening, and learning rules and habits.

Specifically, maps of magnetization transfer saturation (MTsat) – which index myelin – in children with DLD showed reductions in MTsat values in the caudate nucleus bilaterally, and in the left ventral sensorimotor cortex and Heschl’s gyrus.

“Our findings using this protocol suggest that the caudate nucleus, as well as regions in the wider speech and language network, show alterations in myelin in children with DLD,” explained the authors.

“Given myelin’s role in enabling fast and reliable communication in the brain, reduced myelin content may explain why children with DLD struggle with speech and language processing,” they highlighted.
 

Significant advance in DLD understanding

The study findings established changes in striatal and cortical myelin as a “neural basis for DLD,” explained the journal editor, who highlighted that this was a “significant advance” in the understanding of DLD. “These brain differences may explain the poorer language outcomes in this group,” the authors said.

The findings “strongly point” to a role for the striatum in the development of DLD, and this role is likely to be in the “learning of habits and sequences,” the authors said.

They pointed out, however, that myelin patterns can change over development, and that myelination can be observed after successful training. “It is important to assess whether these differences in myelin persist over development in DLD, and if they can be targeted through training using behavioral interventions,” they emphasized.

Professor Watkins commented: “The findings might help us understand the pathways involved at a biological level and ultimately allow us to explain why children with DLD have problems with language learning.”

A spokesperson for the RADLD (Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder) organization, commented: “Developmental language disorder has long been understood to have a neurological basis; however, these differences in the brain development have received limited attention in research.” It added that utilizing new technology helps to better understand the “potential neurological differences” experienced by people with DLD.

More studies are needed to determine if these brain differences cause language problems and how or if experiencing language difficulties could cause these changes in the brain, explained the authors. They hoped that further research may help scientists find new treatments that target these brain differences.

Funding was provided by UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome Trust. The authors declared no competing interests.

A version of this article first appeared on MedscapeUK.

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is characterized by receptive or expressive language difficulties or both. Children with the neurodevelopmental condition “struggle to comprehend and use their native language for no obvious reason,” said the authors of a new study. This leads to problems with grammar, vocabulary, and holding conversations, and in turn an increased risk of “difficulties when learning to read, underachieving academically, being unemployed, and facing social and mental health challenges.”

The condition is common and estimated to affect 7% of children – approximately two in every classroom – but is “underrecognized” said the authors.

Saloni Krishnan, PhD, reader at Royal Holloway, University of London, who led the study as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England, explained: “DLD is a relatively unknown and understudied condition, unlike better known neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, or autism.”

It is suspected that children with DLD may have differences in areas of the brain involved with learning habits and rules. “Although we know that DLD does not result from gross neural lesions, we still do not have a clear picture of how brain anatomy differs in children with DLD,” the authors highlighted.
 

Language learning difficulties linked to brain differences

For their study, published in eLife, researchers used an MRI technique called multiparameter mapping (MPM) to investigate microstructural neural differences in children with DLD. The technique measures the properties of brain tissue and is particularly useful for measuring the amounts of myelin.

“Understanding the neural basis of DLD is particularly challenging given the developmental nature of the disorder, as well as the lack of animal models for understanding language,” explained the authors. However, they pointed out that MPM allows an “unparalleled in vivo method” to investigate microstructural neural changes in children with DLD.

Kate Watkins, PhD, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford and senior author, said: “This type of scan tells us more about the makeup or composition of the brain tissue in different areas.”

As part of the Oxford Brain Organisation in Language Development (OxBOLD) study, the researchers recruited and tested 175 children between the ages of 10 and 15 years. Subsequently, 56 children with typical language development and 33 children with DLD were scanned using MPM.

The researchers compared the two groups and found that children with DLD have less myelin in parts of the brain responsible for speaking, listening, and learning rules and habits.

Specifically, maps of magnetization transfer saturation (MTsat) – which index myelin – in children with DLD showed reductions in MTsat values in the caudate nucleus bilaterally, and in the left ventral sensorimotor cortex and Heschl’s gyrus.

“Our findings using this protocol suggest that the caudate nucleus, as well as regions in the wider speech and language network, show alterations in myelin in children with DLD,” explained the authors.

“Given myelin’s role in enabling fast and reliable communication in the brain, reduced myelin content may explain why children with DLD struggle with speech and language processing,” they highlighted.
 

Significant advance in DLD understanding

The study findings established changes in striatal and cortical myelin as a “neural basis for DLD,” explained the journal editor, who highlighted that this was a “significant advance” in the understanding of DLD. “These brain differences may explain the poorer language outcomes in this group,” the authors said.

The findings “strongly point” to a role for the striatum in the development of DLD, and this role is likely to be in the “learning of habits and sequences,” the authors said.

They pointed out, however, that myelin patterns can change over development, and that myelination can be observed after successful training. “It is important to assess whether these differences in myelin persist over development in DLD, and if they can be targeted through training using behavioral interventions,” they emphasized.

Professor Watkins commented: “The findings might help us understand the pathways involved at a biological level and ultimately allow us to explain why children with DLD have problems with language learning.”

A spokesperson for the RADLD (Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder) organization, commented: “Developmental language disorder has long been understood to have a neurological basis; however, these differences in the brain development have received limited attention in research.” It added that utilizing new technology helps to better understand the “potential neurological differences” experienced by people with DLD.

More studies are needed to determine if these brain differences cause language problems and how or if experiencing language difficulties could cause these changes in the brain, explained the authors. They hoped that further research may help scientists find new treatments that target these brain differences.

Funding was provided by UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome Trust. The authors declared no competing interests.

A version of this article first appeared on MedscapeUK.

Long COVID is likely to cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and will almost certainly affect multiple industries, from restaurants struggling to replace low-wage workers, to airlines scrambling to replace crew, to overwhelmed hospitals, experts are predicting.

“There’s a lot we need to do to understand what it takes to enable disabled people to participate more in the economy,” said Katie Bach, a senior fellow with Brookings Institution and the author of a study looking into long COVID’s impact on the labor market.

Data from June 2022 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, of the 40% of American adults who contracted COVID-19, nearly one in five still have long COVID symptoms. That works out to 1 in 13, or 7.5%, of the overall U.S. adult population.

Drawing from the CDC data, Ms. Bach estimates in her August 2022 report that as many as 4 million working-age Americans are too sick with long COVID to perform their jobs. That works out to as much as $230 billion in lost wages, or almost 1% of the U.S. GDP.

“This is a big deal,” she said. “We’re talking potentially hundreds of billions of dollars a year and that this is big enough to have a measurable impact on the labor market.”

Other sources have suggested lower figures, but the conclusions are the same: Long COVID is an urgent issue that will cost tens of billions of dollars a year in lost wages alone, Ms. Bach said. But it’s not just lost income for workers. There is a cost for businesses and the public.

Throughout the pandemic, COVID-19’s crippling force could be felt across multiple industries. While business has picked up again, staffing shortages remain a challenge. At some airports this summer, air passengers spent hours in security lines; were stranded for days as flights were canceled, rebooked, and canceled again on short notice; and waited weeks for lost luggage. Restaurants have had to cut back their hours. Those seeking medical care had longer than usual wait times in EDs and urgent care clinics. Some EDs temporarily closed.

These challenges have been attributed in part to the “great resignation” and in part because so many infected workers were out, especially during the Omicron waves. But increasingly, economists and health care professionals alike worry about long COVID’s impact on employers and the broader economy.

David Cutler, PhD, a professor of economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., believes the total economic loss could be as high as $3.7 trillion, when factoring in the lost quality of life, the cost in lost earnings, and the cost of higher spending on medical care. His estimate is more than a trillion dollars higher than a previous projection he and fellow economist Lawrence Summers, PhD, made in 2020. The reason? Long COVID.

“The higher estimate is largely a result of the greater prevalence of long COVID than we had guessed at the time,” Dr. Cutler wrote in a paper released in July.

“There are about 10 times the number of people with long COVID as have died of COVID. Because long COVID is so new, there is uncertainty about all of the numbers involved in the calculations. Still, the costs here are conservative, based on only cases to date.”

In Ms. Bach’s Brookings report, she projected that, if recovery from long COVID does not pick up and the population of Americans with long COVID were to grow by 10% a year, the annual cost of lost wages alone could reach half a trillion dollars in a decade.

Meanwhile, a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that workers who missed an entire week of work because of probable COVID-19 illnesses were roughly 7 percentage points less likely to be working a year later, compared with those who did not miss work for health reasons.

“It’s not just individuals with long COVID who are suffering from this. It impacts their families, their livelihoods, and the economy on a global scale. So, we have to raise awareness about those ripple effects,” said Linda Geng, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine with Stanford (Calif.) University’s Primary Care and Population Health. 

“I think it’s hard for the public to grasp ... and understand the scale of this public health crisis.”
 

Debilitating fatigue

Long COVID is roughly defined; the CDC defines it as symptoms that linger 3 or more months after a patient first catches the virus.

The symptoms vary and include profound fatigue and brain issues.

“It’s a new degree of extreme and debilitating fatigue and exhaustion, to the point where you can’t do your daily tasks,” said Dr. Geng, who is also the codirector of Stanford’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic.

“People can be so debilitated, they can’t even do basic things, like the activities of daily living, let alone do their job, particularly if it’s physically or mentally demanding.”

Patients can also have postexertional malaise, where they feel especially bad and symptoms worsen when they exert themselves physically or mentally, Dr. Geng said. Compounding the issue for many long COVID patients is their trouble getting restful sleep. Those with brain fog have issues with memory, processing information, focused concentration, confusion, making mistakes, and multitasking. Pain is another debilitating symptom that can disrupt daily life and ability to work.

Even people with relatively mild infections can end up with long COVID, Dr. Geng said, noting that many of the patients at the Stanford clinic were never hospitalized with their initial infections. While existing research and Dr. Geng’s clinical experience show that long COVID can hit any age, she most commonly sees patients from ages 20 to their 60s, with an average age in the 40s – people in their prime working ages.

Jason Furman, PhD, a former White House economic adviser who is now a professor at Harvard University, noted in August that the labor force participation rate was far below what could be explained by standard demographic changes like an aging population, with the decline evident across all age groups. Dr. Furman does not speculate about why, but others have.

“We are pessimistic: Both the aging of the population and the impact of long COVID imply that the participation rate will be slow to return to its prepandemic level,” Anna Wong, Yelena Shulyatyeva, Andrew Husby, and Eliza Winger, economists with Bloomberg Economics, wrote in a research note. 
 

Supportive policies 

There is some evidence that vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID, but not completely, and it is too early to know if repeat infections increase long COVID risks. There is also no definitive data on how fast or how many people are recovering. Economists often assume that those with long COVID will recover at some point, Ms. Bach noted, but she is careful not to make assumptions.

“If people aren’t recovering, then this group keeps getting bigger,” she said. “We’re still adding, and if people aren’t coming out of that group, this becomes a bigger and bigger problem.”

For now, the number of new people being diagnosed with long COVID appears to have slowed, Ms. Bach said, but it remains to be seen whether the trend can be sustained.

“If people are impaired longer than we think and if the impairment turns out to be severe, then we can have a lot of people who need services like disability insurance,” Dr. Cutler said.

“That could put a really big strain on public sector programs and our ability to meet those needs.”

Policies that support the research and clinical work necessary to prevent and treat long COVID are essential, experts say.

“To me, that is the biggest economic imperative, to say nothing of human suffering,” said Ms. Bach. 

Employers also have a role, and experts say there are a number of accommodations businesses should consider. What happens when an employee has long COVID? Can accommodations be made that allow them to continue working productively? If they spend a great deal of time commuting, can they work from home? What can employers do so that family members do not have to drop out of the workforce to take care of loved ones with long COVID? 
 

Disability insurance

To be sure, there is one piece of the puzzle that does not quite fit, according to Dr. Cutler and Ms. Bach. There is no sign yet of a large increase in federal disability insurance applications, and no one quite knows why. Publicly available government data shows that online applications actually dipped by about 4% each year between 2019 and 2021. Applications in 2022 appear on track to remain slightly below prepandemic levels. 

To qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), people need to have a disability that lasts at least a year. 

“If you’re disabled with long COVID, who knows, right? You don’t know,” said Ms. Bach. “Two of the most dominant symptoms of long COVID are fatigue and brain fog. So, I’ve heard from people that the process of going through an SSDI application is really hard.”

Some long COVID patients told Ms. Bach they simply assumed they would not get SSDI and did not even bother applying. She stressed that working Americans with debilitating long COVID should be aware that their condition is protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the challenge, based on guidance issued by the government, is that not all cases of long COVID qualify as a disability and that individual assessments are necessary.

While more long COVID data are needed, Ms. Bach believes there is enough information for decisionmakers to go after the issue more aggressively. She pointed to the $1.15 billion in funding that Congress earmarked for the National Institutes of Health over the course of 4 years in support of research into the long-term health effects of COVID-19.

“Now, $250 million a year sounds like a lot of money until you start talking about the cost of lost wages – just lost wages,” Ms. Bach said. “That’s not lost productivity. That’s not the cost of people whose family members are sick. Who have to reduce their own labor force participation. That’s not medical costs. Suddenly, $250 million doesn’t really sound like that much.”

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

Long COVID is likely to cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and will almost certainly affect multiple industries, from restaurants struggling to replace low-wage workers, to airlines scrambling to replace crew, to overwhelmed hospitals, experts are predicting.

“There’s a lot we need to do to understand what it takes to enable disabled people to participate more in the economy,” said Katie Bach, a senior fellow with Brookings Institution and the author of a study looking into long COVID’s impact on the labor market.

Data from June 2022 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, of the 40% of American adults who contracted COVID-19, nearly one in five still have long COVID symptoms. That works out to 1 in 13, or 7.5%, of the overall U.S. adult population.

Drawing from the CDC data, Ms. Bach estimates in her August 2022 report that as many as 4 million working-age Americans are too sick with long COVID to perform their jobs. That works out to as much as $230 billion in lost wages, or almost 1% of the U.S. GDP.

“This is a big deal,” she said. “We’re talking potentially hundreds of billions of dollars a year and that this is big enough to have a measurable impact on the labor market.”

Other sources have suggested lower figures, but the conclusions are the same: Long COVID is an urgent issue that will cost tens of billions of dollars a year in lost wages alone, Ms. Bach said. But it’s not just lost income for workers. There is a cost for businesses and the public.

Throughout the pandemic, COVID-19’s crippling force could be felt across multiple industries. While business has picked up again, staffing shortages remain a challenge. At some airports this summer, air passengers spent hours in security lines; were stranded for days as flights were canceled, rebooked, and canceled again on short notice; and waited weeks for lost luggage. Restaurants have had to cut back their hours. Those seeking medical care had longer than usual wait times in EDs and urgent care clinics. Some EDs temporarily closed.

These challenges have been attributed in part to the “great resignation” and in part because so many infected workers were out, especially during the Omicron waves. But increasingly, economists and health care professionals alike worry about long COVID’s impact on employers and the broader economy.

David Cutler, PhD, a professor of economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., believes the total economic loss could be as high as $3.7 trillion, when factoring in the lost quality of life, the cost in lost earnings, and the cost of higher spending on medical care. His estimate is more than a trillion dollars higher than a previous projection he and fellow economist Lawrence Summers, PhD, made in 2020. The reason? Long COVID.

“The higher estimate is largely a result of the greater prevalence of long COVID than we had guessed at the time,” Dr. Cutler wrote in a paper released in July.

“There are about 10 times the number of people with long COVID as have died of COVID. Because long COVID is so new, there is uncertainty about all of the numbers involved in the calculations. Still, the costs here are conservative, based on only cases to date.”

In Ms. Bach’s Brookings report, she projected that, if recovery from long COVID does not pick up and the population of Americans with long COVID were to grow by 10% a year, the annual cost of lost wages alone could reach half a trillion dollars in a decade.

Meanwhile, a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that workers who missed an entire week of work because of probable COVID-19 illnesses were roughly 7 percentage points less likely to be working a year later, compared with those who did not miss work for health reasons.

“It’s not just individuals with long COVID who are suffering from this. It impacts their families, their livelihoods, and the economy on a global scale. So, we have to raise awareness about those ripple effects,” said Linda Geng, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine with Stanford (Calif.) University’s Primary Care and Population Health. 

“I think it’s hard for the public to grasp ... and understand the scale of this public health crisis.”
 

Debilitating fatigue

Long COVID is roughly defined; the CDC defines it as symptoms that linger 3 or more months after a patient first catches the virus.

The symptoms vary and include profound fatigue and brain issues.

“It’s a new degree of extreme and debilitating fatigue and exhaustion, to the point where you can’t do your daily tasks,” said Dr. Geng, who is also the codirector of Stanford’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic.

“People can be so debilitated, they can’t even do basic things, like the activities of daily living, let alone do their job, particularly if it’s physically or mentally demanding.”

Patients can also have postexertional malaise, where they feel especially bad and symptoms worsen when they exert themselves physically or mentally, Dr. Geng said. Compounding the issue for many long COVID patients is their trouble getting restful sleep. Those with brain fog have issues with memory, processing information, focused concentration, confusion, making mistakes, and multitasking. Pain is another debilitating symptom that can disrupt daily life and ability to work.

Even people with relatively mild infections can end up with long COVID, Dr. Geng said, noting that many of the patients at the Stanford clinic were never hospitalized with their initial infections. While existing research and Dr. Geng’s clinical experience show that long COVID can hit any age, she most commonly sees patients from ages 20 to their 60s, with an average age in the 40s – people in their prime working ages.

Jason Furman, PhD, a former White House economic adviser who is now a professor at Harvard University, noted in August that the labor force participation rate was far below what could be explained by standard demographic changes like an aging population, with the decline evident across all age groups. Dr. Furman does not speculate about why, but others have.

“We are pessimistic: Both the aging of the population and the impact of long COVID imply that the participation rate will be slow to return to its prepandemic level,” Anna Wong, Yelena Shulyatyeva, Andrew Husby, and Eliza Winger, economists with Bloomberg Economics, wrote in a research note. 
 

Supportive policies 

There is some evidence that vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID, but not completely, and it is too early to know if repeat infections increase long COVID risks. There is also no definitive data on how fast or how many people are recovering. Economists often assume that those with long COVID will recover at some point, Ms. Bach noted, but she is careful not to make assumptions.

“If people aren’t recovering, then this group keeps getting bigger,” she said. “We’re still adding, and if people aren’t coming out of that group, this becomes a bigger and bigger problem.”

For now, the number of new people being diagnosed with long COVID appears to have slowed, Ms. Bach said, but it remains to be seen whether the trend can be sustained.

“If people are impaired longer than we think and if the impairment turns out to be severe, then we can have a lot of people who need services like disability insurance,” Dr. Cutler said.

“That could put a really big strain on public sector programs and our ability to meet those needs.”

Policies that support the research and clinical work necessary to prevent and treat long COVID are essential, experts say.

“To me, that is the biggest economic imperative, to say nothing of human suffering,” said Ms. Bach. 

Employers also have a role, and experts say there are a number of accommodations businesses should consider. What happens when an employee has long COVID? Can accommodations be made that allow them to continue working productively? If they spend a great deal of time commuting, can they work from home? What can employers do so that family members do not have to drop out of the workforce to take care of loved ones with long COVID? 
 

Disability insurance

To be sure, there is one piece of the puzzle that does not quite fit, according to Dr. Cutler and Ms. Bach. There is no sign yet of a large increase in federal disability insurance applications, and no one quite knows why. Publicly available government data shows that online applications actually dipped by about 4% each year between 2019 and 2021. Applications in 2022 appear on track to remain slightly below prepandemic levels. 

To qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), people need to have a disability that lasts at least a year. 

“If you’re disabled with long COVID, who knows, right? You don’t know,” said Ms. Bach. “Two of the most dominant symptoms of long COVID are fatigue and brain fog. So, I’ve heard from people that the process of going through an SSDI application is really hard.”

Some long COVID patients told Ms. Bach they simply assumed they would not get SSDI and did not even bother applying. She stressed that working Americans with debilitating long COVID should be aware that their condition is protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the challenge, based on guidance issued by the government, is that not all cases of long COVID qualify as a disability and that individual assessments are necessary.

While more long COVID data are needed, Ms. Bach believes there is enough information for decisionmakers to go after the issue more aggressively. She pointed to the $1.15 billion in funding that Congress earmarked for the National Institutes of Health over the course of 4 years in support of research into the long-term health effects of COVID-19.

“Now, $250 million a year sounds like a lot of money until you start talking about the cost of lost wages – just lost wages,” Ms. Bach said. “That’s not lost productivity. That’s not the cost of people whose family members are sick. Who have to reduce their own labor force participation. That’s not medical costs. Suddenly, $250 million doesn’t really sound like that much.”

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

Long COVID is likely to cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and will almost certainly affect multiple industries, from restaurants struggling to replace low-wage workers, to airlines scrambling to replace crew, to overwhelmed hospitals, experts are predicting.

“There’s a lot we need to do to understand what it takes to enable disabled people to participate more in the economy,” said Katie Bach, a senior fellow with Brookings Institution and the author of a study looking into long COVID’s impact on the labor market.

Data from June 2022 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, of the 40% of American adults who contracted COVID-19, nearly one in five still have long COVID symptoms. That works out to 1 in 13, or 7.5%, of the overall U.S. adult population.

Drawing from the CDC data, Ms. Bach estimates in her August 2022 report that as many as 4 million working-age Americans are too sick with long COVID to perform their jobs. That works out to as much as $230 billion in lost wages, or almost 1% of the U.S. GDP.

“This is a big deal,” she said. “We’re talking potentially hundreds of billions of dollars a year and that this is big enough to have a measurable impact on the labor market.”

Other sources have suggested lower figures, but the conclusions are the same: Long COVID is an urgent issue that will cost tens of billions of dollars a year in lost wages alone, Ms. Bach said. But it’s not just lost income for workers. There is a cost for businesses and the public.

Throughout the pandemic, COVID-19’s crippling force could be felt across multiple industries. While business has picked up again, staffing shortages remain a challenge. At some airports this summer, air passengers spent hours in security lines; were stranded for days as flights were canceled, rebooked, and canceled again on short notice; and waited weeks for lost luggage. Restaurants have had to cut back their hours. Those seeking medical care had longer than usual wait times in EDs and urgent care clinics. Some EDs temporarily closed.

These challenges have been attributed in part to the “great resignation” and in part because so many infected workers were out, especially during the Omicron waves. But increasingly, economists and health care professionals alike worry about long COVID’s impact on employers and the broader economy.

David Cutler, PhD, a professor of economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., believes the total economic loss could be as high as $3.7 trillion, when factoring in the lost quality of life, the cost in lost earnings, and the cost of higher spending on medical care. His estimate is more than a trillion dollars higher than a previous projection he and fellow economist Lawrence Summers, PhD, made in 2020. The reason? Long COVID.

“The higher estimate is largely a result of the greater prevalence of long COVID than we had guessed at the time,” Dr. Cutler wrote in a paper released in July.

“There are about 10 times the number of people with long COVID as have died of COVID. Because long COVID is so new, there is uncertainty about all of the numbers involved in the calculations. Still, the costs here are conservative, based on only cases to date.”

In Ms. Bach’s Brookings report, she projected that, if recovery from long COVID does not pick up and the population of Americans with long COVID were to grow by 10% a year, the annual cost of lost wages alone could reach half a trillion dollars in a decade.

Meanwhile, a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that workers who missed an entire week of work because of probable COVID-19 illnesses were roughly 7 percentage points less likely to be working a year later, compared with those who did not miss work for health reasons.

“It’s not just individuals with long COVID who are suffering from this. It impacts their families, their livelihoods, and the economy on a global scale. So, we have to raise awareness about those ripple effects,” said Linda Geng, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine with Stanford (Calif.) University’s Primary Care and Population Health. 

“I think it’s hard for the public to grasp ... and understand the scale of this public health crisis.”
 

Debilitating fatigue

Long COVID is roughly defined; the CDC defines it as symptoms that linger 3 or more months after a patient first catches the virus.

The symptoms vary and include profound fatigue and brain issues.

“It’s a new degree of extreme and debilitating fatigue and exhaustion, to the point where you can’t do your daily tasks,” said Dr. Geng, who is also the codirector of Stanford’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic.

“People can be so debilitated, they can’t even do basic things, like the activities of daily living, let alone do their job, particularly if it’s physically or mentally demanding.”

Patients can also have postexertional malaise, where they feel especially bad and symptoms worsen when they exert themselves physically or mentally, Dr. Geng said. Compounding the issue for many long COVID patients is their trouble getting restful sleep. Those with brain fog have issues with memory, processing information, focused concentration, confusion, making mistakes, and multitasking. Pain is another debilitating symptom that can disrupt daily life and ability to work.

Even people with relatively mild infections can end up with long COVID, Dr. Geng said, noting that many of the patients at the Stanford clinic were never hospitalized with their initial infections. While existing research and Dr. Geng’s clinical experience show that long COVID can hit any age, she most commonly sees patients from ages 20 to their 60s, with an average age in the 40s – people in their prime working ages.

Jason Furman, PhD, a former White House economic adviser who is now a professor at Harvard University, noted in August that the labor force participation rate was far below what could be explained by standard demographic changes like an aging population, with the decline evident across all age groups. Dr. Furman does not speculate about why, but others have.

“We are pessimistic: Both the aging of the population and the impact of long COVID imply that the participation rate will be slow to return to its prepandemic level,” Anna Wong, Yelena Shulyatyeva, Andrew Husby, and Eliza Winger, economists with Bloomberg Economics, wrote in a research note. 
 

Supportive policies 

There is some evidence that vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID, but not completely, and it is too early to know if repeat infections increase long COVID risks. There is also no definitive data on how fast or how many people are recovering. Economists often assume that those with long COVID will recover at some point, Ms. Bach noted, but she is careful not to make assumptions.

“If people aren’t recovering, then this group keeps getting bigger,” she said. “We’re still adding, and if people aren’t coming out of that group, this becomes a bigger and bigger problem.”

For now, the number of new people being diagnosed with long COVID appears to have slowed, Ms. Bach said, but it remains to be seen whether the trend can be sustained.

“If people are impaired longer than we think and if the impairment turns out to be severe, then we can have a lot of people who need services like disability insurance,” Dr. Cutler said.

“That could put a really big strain on public sector programs and our ability to meet those needs.”

Policies that support the research and clinical work necessary to prevent and treat long COVID are essential, experts say.

“To me, that is the biggest economic imperative, to say nothing of human suffering,” said Ms. Bach. 

Employers also have a role, and experts say there are a number of accommodations businesses should consider. What happens when an employee has long COVID? Can accommodations be made that allow them to continue working productively? If they spend a great deal of time commuting, can they work from home? What can employers do so that family members do not have to drop out of the workforce to take care of loved ones with long COVID? 
 

Disability insurance

To be sure, there is one piece of the puzzle that does not quite fit, according to Dr. Cutler and Ms. Bach. There is no sign yet of a large increase in federal disability insurance applications, and no one quite knows why. Publicly available government data shows that online applications actually dipped by about 4% each year between 2019 and 2021. Applications in 2022 appear on track to remain slightly below prepandemic levels. 

To qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), people need to have a disability that lasts at least a year. 

“If you’re disabled with long COVID, who knows, right? You don’t know,” said Ms. Bach. “Two of the most dominant symptoms of long COVID are fatigue and brain fog. So, I’ve heard from people that the process of going through an SSDI application is really hard.”

Some long COVID patients told Ms. Bach they simply assumed they would not get SSDI and did not even bother applying. She stressed that working Americans with debilitating long COVID should be aware that their condition is protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the challenge, based on guidance issued by the government, is that not all cases of long COVID qualify as a disability and that individual assessments are necessary.

While more long COVID data are needed, Ms. Bach believes there is enough information for decisionmakers to go after the issue more aggressively. She pointed to the $1.15 billion in funding that Congress earmarked for the National Institutes of Health over the course of 4 years in support of research into the long-term health effects of COVID-19.

“Now, $250 million a year sounds like a lot of money until you start talking about the cost of lost wages – just lost wages,” Ms. Bach said. “That’s not lost productivity. That’s not the cost of people whose family members are sick. Who have to reduce their own labor force participation. That’s not medical costs. Suddenly, $250 million doesn’t really sound like that much.”

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

Herpes to the rescue

Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?

Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.

Aunt_Spray/Thinkstock

Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.

During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
 

A breath of not-so-fresh air

There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.

PxHere

As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.

The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.

Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
 

We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is

We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.

Recompose

There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”

Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.

California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.

We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
 

That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.

xijian/Getty Images

Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.

What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.

“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.

Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.

Herpes to the rescue

Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?

Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.

Aunt_Spray/Thinkstock

Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.

During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
 

A breath of not-so-fresh air

There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.

PxHere

As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.

The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.

Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
 

We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is

We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.

Recompose

There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”

Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.

California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.

We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
 

That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.

xijian/Getty Images

Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.

What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.

“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.

Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.

Herpes to the rescue

Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?

Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.

Aunt_Spray/Thinkstock

Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.

During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
 

A breath of not-so-fresh air

There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.

PxHere

As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.

The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.

Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
 

We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is

We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.

Recompose

There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”

Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.

California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.

We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
 

That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.

xijian/Getty Images

Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.

What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.

“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.

Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.

LONDON – A little over a decade ago, Four Seasons Health Care was among the largest long-term care home companies in Britain, operating 500 sites with 20,000 residents and more than 60 specialist centers. Domestic and global private equity investors had supercharged the company’s growth, betting that the rising needs of aging Britons would yield big returns.

Within weeks, the Four Seasons brand may be finished.

Christie & Co., a commercial real estate broker, splashed a summer sale across its website that signaled the demise: The last 111 Four Seasons facilities in England, Scotland, and Jersey were on the market. Already sold were its 29 homes in Northern Ireland.

Four Seasons collapsed after years of private equity investors rolling in one after another to buy its business, sell its real estate, and at times wrest multimillion-dollar profits through complex debt schemes – until the last big equity fund, Terra Firma, which in 2012 paid about $1.3 billion for the company, was caught short.

In a country where government health care is a right, the Four Seasons story exemplifies the high-stakes rise – and, ultimately, fall – of private equity investment in health and social services. Hanging over society’s most vulnerable patients, these heavily leveraged deals failed to account for the cost of their care. Private equity firms are known for making a profit on quick-turnaround investments.

“People often say: ‘Why have American investors, as well as professional investors here and in other countries, poured so much into this sector?’ I think they were dazzled by the potential of the demographics,” said Nick Hood, an analyst at Opus Restructuring & Insolvency in London, which advises care homes – the British equivalent of U.S. nursing homes or assisted living facilities. They “saw the baby boomers aging and thought there would be infinite demands.”

What they missed, Mr. Hood said, “was that about half of all the residents in U.K. homes are funded by the government in one way or another. They aren’t private pay – and they’ve got no money.”
 

Residents as ‘revenue streams’

As in the United States, long-term care homes in Britain serve a mixed market of public- and private-pay residents, and those whose balance sheets rest heavily on government payments are stressed even in better economic times. Andrew Dobbie, a community officer for Unison, a union that represents care home workers, said private equity investors often see homes like Four Seasons as having “two revenue streams, the properties themselves and the residents,” with efficiencies to exploit.

But investors don’t always understand what caregivers do, he said, or that older residents require more time than spreadsheets have calculated. “That’s a problem when you are looking at operating care homes,” Mr. Dobbie said. “Care workers need to have soft skills to work with a vulnerable group of people. It’s not the same skills as stocking shelves in a supermarket.”

A recent study, funded in part by Unison and conducted by University of Surrey researchers, found big changes in the quality of care after private equity investments. More than a dozen staff members, who weren’t identified by name or facility, said companies were “cutting corners” to curb costs because their priority was profit. Staffers said “these changes meant residents sometimes went without the appropriate care, timely medication or sufficient sanitary supplies.”

In August, the House of Commons received a sobering account: The number of adults 65 and older who will need care is speedily rising, estimated to go from 3.5 million in 2018 to 5.2 million in 2038. Yet workers at care homes are among the lowest paid in health care.

“The covid-19 pandemic shone a light on the adult social care sector,” according to the parliamentary report, which noted that “many frustrated and burnt out care workers left” for better-paying jobs. The report’s advice in a year of soaring inflation and energy costs? The government should add “at least £7 billion a year” – more than $8 billion – or risk deterioration of care.

Britain’s care homes are separate from the much-lauded National Health Service, funded by the government. Care homes rely on support from local authorities, akin to counties in the United States. But they have seen a sharp drop in funding from the British government, which cut a third of its payments in the past decade. When the pandemic hit, the differences were apparent: Care home workers were not afforded masks, gloves, or gowns to shield them from the deadly virus.

Years ago, care homes were largely run by families or local entities. In the 1990s, the government promoted privatization, triggering investments and consolidations. Today, private equity firms own three of the country’s five biggest care home providers.

Chris Thomas, a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said investors benefited from scant financial oversight. “The accounting practices are horrendously complicated and meant to be complicated,” he said. Local authorities try “to regulate more, but they don’t have the expertise.”
 

The financial shuffle

At Four Seasons, the speed of change was dizzying. From 2004 to 2017, big money came and went, with revenue at times threaded through multiple offshore vehicles. Among the groups that owned Four Seasons, in part or in its entirety: British private equity firm Alchemy Partners; Allianz Capital Partners, a German private equity firm; Three Delta, an investment fund backed by Qatar; the American hedge fund Monarch Alternative Capital; and Terra Firma, the British private equity group that wallowed in debt demands. H/2 Capital Partners, a hedge fund in Connecticut, was Four Seasons’ main creditor and took over. By 2019, Four Seasons was managed by insolvency experts.

Pressed on whether Four Seasons would exist in any form after the current sale of its property and businesses, MHP Communications, representing the company, said in an email: “It is too early in the process to speculate about the future of the brand.”

Vivek Kotecha, an accountant who has examined the Four Seasons financial shuffle and coauthored the Unison report, said private equity investment – in homes for older residents and, increasingly, in facilities for troubled children – is now part of the financial mainstream. The consulting firm McKinsey in 2022estimated that private markets manage nearly $10 trillion in assets, making them a dominant force in global markets.

“What you find in America with private equity is much the same here,” said Mr. Kotecha, the founder of Trinava Consulting in London. “They are often the same firms, doing the same things.” What was remarkable about Four Seasons was the enormous liability from high-yield bonds that underpinned the deal – one equaling $514 million at 8.75% interest and another for $277 million at 12.75% interest.

Guy Hands, the high-flying British founder of Terra Firma, bought Four Seasons in 2012, soon after losing an epic court battle with Citigroup over the purchase price of the music company EMI Group. Terra Firma acquired the care homes and then a gardening business with more than 100 stores. Neither proved easy, or good, bets. Hands, a Londoner who moved offshore to Guernsey, declined through a representative to discuss Four Seasons.

Mr. Kotecha, however, helped the BBC try to make sense of Four Seasons’ holdings by tracking financial filings. It was “the most complicated spreadsheet I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Kotecha said. “I think there were more subsidiaries involved in Four Seasons’ care homes than there were with General Motors in Europe.”

As Britain’s small homes were swept up in consolidations, some financial practices were dubious. At times, businesses sold the buildings as lease-back deals – not a problem at first – that, after multiple purchases, left operators paying rent with heavy interest that sapped operating budgets. By 2020, some care homes were estimated to be spending as much as 16% of their bed fees on debt payments, according to parliamentary testimony this year.

How could that happen? In part, for-profit providers – backed by private-equity groups and other corporations – had subsidiaries of their parent companies act as lender, setting the rates.

Britain’s elder care was unrecognizable within a generation. By 2022, private-equity companies alone accounted for 55,000 beds, or about 12.6% of the total for-profit care beds for older people in the United Kingdom, according to LaingBuisson, a health care consultancy. LaingBuisson calculated that the average residential care home fee as of February 2022 was about $44,700 a year; the average nursing home fee was $62,275 a year.

From 1980 to 2018, the number of residential care beds provided by local authorities fell 88% – from 141,719 to 17,100, according to the nonprofit Centre for Health and the Public Interest. Independent operators – nonprofits and for-profits – moved in, it said, controlling 243,000 beds by 2018. Nursing homes saw a similar shift: Private providers accounted for 194,100 beds in 2018, compared with 25,500 decades earlier.
 

Beyond government control

British lawmakers in the winter of 2021-2022 tried – and failed – to bolster financial reporting rules for care homes, including banning the use of government funds to pay off debt.

“I don’t have a problem with offshore companies that make profits if they offer good services. I don’t have a problem with private equity and hedge funds who deliver good returns to their shareholders,” Ros Altmann, a Conservative Party member in the House of Lords and a pension expert, said in a February debate. “I do have a problem if those companies are taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in our society without oversight, without controls.”

She cited Four Seasons as an example of how regulators “have no control over the financial models that are used.” Ms. Altmann warned that economic headwinds could worsen matters: “We now have very heavily debt-laden [homes] in an environment where interest rates are heading upward.”

In August, the Bank of England raised borrowing rates. It now forecasts double-digit inflation – as much as 11% – through 2023.

And that leaves care home owner Robert Kilgour pensive about whether government grasps the risks and possibilities that the sector is facing. “It’s a struggle, and it’s becoming more of a struggle,” he said. A global energy crisis is the latest unexpected emergency. Mr. Kilgour said he recently signed electricity contracts, for April 2023, at rates that will rise by 200%. That means an extra $2,400 a day in utility costs for his homes.

Mr. Kilgour founded Four Seasons, opening its first home, in Fife, Scotland, in 1989. His ambition for its growth was modest: “Ten by 2000.” That changed in 1999 when Alchemy swooped in to expand nationally. Mr. Kilgour had left Four Seasons by 2004, turning to other ventures.

Still, he saw opportunity in elder care and opened Renaissance Care, which now operates 16 homes with 750 beds in Scotland. “I missed it,” he said in an interview in London. “It’s people and it’s property, and I like that.”

“People asked me if I had any regrets about selling to private equity. Well, no, the people I dealt with were very fair, very straight. There were no shenanigans,” Mr. Kilgour said, noting that Alchemy made money but invested as well.

Mr. Kilgour said the pandemic motivated him to improve his business. He is spending millions on new LED lighting and boilers, as well as training staffers on digital record-keeping, all to winnow costs. He increased hourly wages by 5%, but employees have suggested other ways to retain staff: shorter shifts and workdays that fit school schedules or allow them to care for their own older relatives.

Debates over whether the government should move back into elder care make little sense to Mr. Kilgour. Britain has had private care for decades, and he doesn’t see that changing. Instead, operators need help balancing private and publicly funded beds “so you have a blended rate for care and some certainty in the business.”

Consolidations are slowing, he said, which might be part of a long-overdue reckoning. “The idea of 200, 300, 400 care homes – that big is good and big is best – those days are gone,” Mr. Kilgour said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

LONDON – A little over a decade ago, Four Seasons Health Care was among the largest long-term care home companies in Britain, operating 500 sites with 20,000 residents and more than 60 specialist centers. Domestic and global private equity investors had supercharged the company’s growth, betting that the rising needs of aging Britons would yield big returns.

Within weeks, the Four Seasons brand may be finished.

Christie & Co., a commercial real estate broker, splashed a summer sale across its website that signaled the demise: The last 111 Four Seasons facilities in England, Scotland, and Jersey were on the market. Already sold were its 29 homes in Northern Ireland.

Four Seasons collapsed after years of private equity investors rolling in one after another to buy its business, sell its real estate, and at times wrest multimillion-dollar profits through complex debt schemes – until the last big equity fund, Terra Firma, which in 2012 paid about $1.3 billion for the company, was caught short.

In a country where government health care is a right, the Four Seasons story exemplifies the high-stakes rise – and, ultimately, fall – of private equity investment in health and social services. Hanging over society’s most vulnerable patients, these heavily leveraged deals failed to account for the cost of their care. Private equity firms are known for making a profit on quick-turnaround investments.

“People often say: ‘Why have American investors, as well as professional investors here and in other countries, poured so much into this sector?’ I think they were dazzled by the potential of the demographics,” said Nick Hood, an analyst at Opus Restructuring & Insolvency in London, which advises care homes – the British equivalent of U.S. nursing homes or assisted living facilities. They “saw the baby boomers aging and thought there would be infinite demands.”

What they missed, Mr. Hood said, “was that about half of all the residents in U.K. homes are funded by the government in one way or another. They aren’t private pay – and they’ve got no money.”
 

Residents as ‘revenue streams’

As in the United States, long-term care homes in Britain serve a mixed market of public- and private-pay residents, and those whose balance sheets rest heavily on government payments are stressed even in better economic times. Andrew Dobbie, a community officer for Unison, a union that represents care home workers, said private equity investors often see homes like Four Seasons as having “two revenue streams, the properties themselves and the residents,” with efficiencies to exploit.

But investors don’t always understand what caregivers do, he said, or that older residents require more time than spreadsheets have calculated. “That’s a problem when you are looking at operating care homes,” Mr. Dobbie said. “Care workers need to have soft skills to work with a vulnerable group of people. It’s not the same skills as stocking shelves in a supermarket.”

A recent study, funded in part by Unison and conducted by University of Surrey researchers, found big changes in the quality of care after private equity investments. More than a dozen staff members, who weren’t identified by name or facility, said companies were “cutting corners” to curb costs because their priority was profit. Staffers said “these changes meant residents sometimes went without the appropriate care, timely medication or sufficient sanitary supplies.”

In August, the House of Commons received a sobering account: The number of adults 65 and older who will need care is speedily rising, estimated to go from 3.5 million in 2018 to 5.2 million in 2038. Yet workers at care homes are among the lowest paid in health care.

“The covid-19 pandemic shone a light on the adult social care sector,” according to the parliamentary report, which noted that “many frustrated and burnt out care workers left” for better-paying jobs. The report’s advice in a year of soaring inflation and energy costs? The government should add “at least £7 billion a year” – more than $8 billion – or risk deterioration of care.

Britain’s care homes are separate from the much-lauded National Health Service, funded by the government. Care homes rely on support from local authorities, akin to counties in the United States. But they have seen a sharp drop in funding from the British government, which cut a third of its payments in the past decade. When the pandemic hit, the differences were apparent: Care home workers were not afforded masks, gloves, or gowns to shield them from the deadly virus.

Years ago, care homes were largely run by families or local entities. In the 1990s, the government promoted privatization, triggering investments and consolidations. Today, private equity firms own three of the country’s five biggest care home providers.

Chris Thomas, a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said investors benefited from scant financial oversight. “The accounting practices are horrendously complicated and meant to be complicated,” he said. Local authorities try “to regulate more, but they don’t have the expertise.”
 

The financial shuffle

At Four Seasons, the speed of change was dizzying. From 2004 to 2017, big money came and went, with revenue at times threaded through multiple offshore vehicles. Among the groups that owned Four Seasons, in part or in its entirety: British private equity firm Alchemy Partners; Allianz Capital Partners, a German private equity firm; Three Delta, an investment fund backed by Qatar; the American hedge fund Monarch Alternative Capital; and Terra Firma, the British private equity group that wallowed in debt demands. H/2 Capital Partners, a hedge fund in Connecticut, was Four Seasons’ main creditor and took over. By 2019, Four Seasons was managed by insolvency experts.

Pressed on whether Four Seasons would exist in any form after the current sale of its property and businesses, MHP Communications, representing the company, said in an email: “It is too early in the process to speculate about the future of the brand.”

Vivek Kotecha, an accountant who has examined the Four Seasons financial shuffle and coauthored the Unison report, said private equity investment – in homes for older residents and, increasingly, in facilities for troubled children – is now part of the financial mainstream. The consulting firm McKinsey in 2022estimated that private markets manage nearly $10 trillion in assets, making them a dominant force in global markets.

“What you find in America with private equity is much the same here,” said Mr. Kotecha, the founder of Trinava Consulting in London. “They are often the same firms, doing the same things.” What was remarkable about Four Seasons was the enormous liability from high-yield bonds that underpinned the deal – one equaling $514 million at 8.75% interest and another for $277 million at 12.75% interest.

Guy Hands, the high-flying British founder of Terra Firma, bought Four Seasons in 2012, soon after losing an epic court battle with Citigroup over the purchase price of the music company EMI Group. Terra Firma acquired the care homes and then a gardening business with more than 100 stores. Neither proved easy, or good, bets. Hands, a Londoner who moved offshore to Guernsey, declined through a representative to discuss Four Seasons.

Mr. Kotecha, however, helped the BBC try to make sense of Four Seasons’ holdings by tracking financial filings. It was “the most complicated spreadsheet I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Kotecha said. “I think there were more subsidiaries involved in Four Seasons’ care homes than there were with General Motors in Europe.”

As Britain’s small homes were swept up in consolidations, some financial practices were dubious. At times, businesses sold the buildings as lease-back deals – not a problem at first – that, after multiple purchases, left operators paying rent with heavy interest that sapped operating budgets. By 2020, some care homes were estimated to be spending as much as 16% of their bed fees on debt payments, according to parliamentary testimony this year.

How could that happen? In part, for-profit providers – backed by private-equity groups and other corporations – had subsidiaries of their parent companies act as lender, setting the rates.

Britain’s elder care was unrecognizable within a generation. By 2022, private-equity companies alone accounted for 55,000 beds, or about 12.6% of the total for-profit care beds for older people in the United Kingdom, according to LaingBuisson, a health care consultancy. LaingBuisson calculated that the average residential care home fee as of February 2022 was about $44,700 a year; the average nursing home fee was $62,275 a year.

From 1980 to 2018, the number of residential care beds provided by local authorities fell 88% – from 141,719 to 17,100, according to the nonprofit Centre for Health and the Public Interest. Independent operators – nonprofits and for-profits – moved in, it said, controlling 243,000 beds by 2018. Nursing homes saw a similar shift: Private providers accounted for 194,100 beds in 2018, compared with 25,500 decades earlier.
 

Beyond government control

British lawmakers in the winter of 2021-2022 tried – and failed – to bolster financial reporting rules for care homes, including banning the use of government funds to pay off debt.

“I don’t have a problem with offshore companies that make profits if they offer good services. I don’t have a problem with private equity and hedge funds who deliver good returns to their shareholders,” Ros Altmann, a Conservative Party member in the House of Lords and a pension expert, said in a February debate. “I do have a problem if those companies are taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in our society without oversight, without controls.”

She cited Four Seasons as an example of how regulators “have no control over the financial models that are used.” Ms. Altmann warned that economic headwinds could worsen matters: “We now have very heavily debt-laden [homes] in an environment where interest rates are heading upward.”

In August, the Bank of England raised borrowing rates. It now forecasts double-digit inflation – as much as 11% – through 2023.

And that leaves care home owner Robert Kilgour pensive about whether government grasps the risks and possibilities that the sector is facing. “It’s a struggle, and it’s becoming more of a struggle,” he said. A global energy crisis is the latest unexpected emergency. Mr. Kilgour said he recently signed electricity contracts, for April 2023, at rates that will rise by 200%. That means an extra $2,400 a day in utility costs for his homes.

Mr. Kilgour founded Four Seasons, opening its first home, in Fife, Scotland, in 1989. His ambition for its growth was modest: “Ten by 2000.” That changed in 1999 when Alchemy swooped in to expand nationally. Mr. Kilgour had left Four Seasons by 2004, turning to other ventures.

Still, he saw opportunity in elder care and opened Renaissance Care, which now operates 16 homes with 750 beds in Scotland. “I missed it,” he said in an interview in London. “It’s people and it’s property, and I like that.”

“People asked me if I had any regrets about selling to private equity. Well, no, the people I dealt with were very fair, very straight. There were no shenanigans,” Mr. Kilgour said, noting that Alchemy made money but invested as well.

Mr. Kilgour said the pandemic motivated him to improve his business. He is spending millions on new LED lighting and boilers, as well as training staffers on digital record-keeping, all to winnow costs. He increased hourly wages by 5%, but employees have suggested other ways to retain staff: shorter shifts and workdays that fit school schedules or allow them to care for their own older relatives.

Debates over whether the government should move back into elder care make little sense to Mr. Kilgour. Britain has had private care for decades, and he doesn’t see that changing. Instead, operators need help balancing private and publicly funded beds “so you have a blended rate for care and some certainty in the business.”

Consolidations are slowing, he said, which might be part of a long-overdue reckoning. “The idea of 200, 300, 400 care homes – that big is good and big is best – those days are gone,” Mr. Kilgour said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

LONDON – A little over a decade ago, Four Seasons Health Care was among the largest long-term care home companies in Britain, operating 500 sites with 20,000 residents and more than 60 specialist centers. Domestic and global private equity investors had supercharged the company’s growth, betting that the rising needs of aging Britons would yield big returns.

Within weeks, the Four Seasons brand may be finished.

Christie & Co., a commercial real estate broker, splashed a summer sale across its website that signaled the demise: The last 111 Four Seasons facilities in England, Scotland, and Jersey were on the market. Already sold were its 29 homes in Northern Ireland.

Four Seasons collapsed after years of private equity investors rolling in one after another to buy its business, sell its real estate, and at times wrest multimillion-dollar profits through complex debt schemes – until the last big equity fund, Terra Firma, which in 2012 paid about $1.3 billion for the company, was caught short.

In a country where government health care is a right, the Four Seasons story exemplifies the high-stakes rise – and, ultimately, fall – of private equity investment in health and social services. Hanging over society’s most vulnerable patients, these heavily leveraged deals failed to account for the cost of their care. Private equity firms are known for making a profit on quick-turnaround investments.

“People often say: ‘Why have American investors, as well as professional investors here and in other countries, poured so much into this sector?’ I think they were dazzled by the potential of the demographics,” said Nick Hood, an analyst at Opus Restructuring & Insolvency in London, which advises care homes – the British equivalent of U.S. nursing homes or assisted living facilities. They “saw the baby boomers aging and thought there would be infinite demands.”

What they missed, Mr. Hood said, “was that about half of all the residents in U.K. homes are funded by the government in one way or another. They aren’t private pay – and they’ve got no money.”
 

Residents as ‘revenue streams’

As in the United States, long-term care homes in Britain serve a mixed market of public- and private-pay residents, and those whose balance sheets rest heavily on government payments are stressed even in better economic times. Andrew Dobbie, a community officer for Unison, a union that represents care home workers, said private equity investors often see homes like Four Seasons as having “two revenue streams, the properties themselves and the residents,” with efficiencies to exploit.

But investors don’t always understand what caregivers do, he said, or that older residents require more time than spreadsheets have calculated. “That’s a problem when you are looking at operating care homes,” Mr. Dobbie said. “Care workers need to have soft skills to work with a vulnerable group of people. It’s not the same skills as stocking shelves in a supermarket.”

A recent study, funded in part by Unison and conducted by University of Surrey researchers, found big changes in the quality of care after private equity investments. More than a dozen staff members, who weren’t identified by name or facility, said companies were “cutting corners” to curb costs because their priority was profit. Staffers said “these changes meant residents sometimes went without the appropriate care, timely medication or sufficient sanitary supplies.”

In August, the House of Commons received a sobering account: The number of adults 65 and older who will need care is speedily rising, estimated to go from 3.5 million in 2018 to 5.2 million in 2038. Yet workers at care homes are among the lowest paid in health care.

“The covid-19 pandemic shone a light on the adult social care sector,” according to the parliamentary report, which noted that “many frustrated and burnt out care workers left” for better-paying jobs. The report’s advice in a year of soaring inflation and energy costs? The government should add “at least £7 billion a year” – more than $8 billion – or risk deterioration of care.

Britain’s care homes are separate from the much-lauded National Health Service, funded by the government. Care homes rely on support from local authorities, akin to counties in the United States. But they have seen a sharp drop in funding from the British government, which cut a third of its payments in the past decade. When the pandemic hit, the differences were apparent: Care home workers were not afforded masks, gloves, or gowns to shield them from the deadly virus.

Years ago, care homes were largely run by families or local entities. In the 1990s, the government promoted privatization, triggering investments and consolidations. Today, private equity firms own three of the country’s five biggest care home providers.

Chris Thomas, a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said investors benefited from scant financial oversight. “The accounting practices are horrendously complicated and meant to be complicated,” he said. Local authorities try “to regulate more, but they don’t have the expertise.”
 

The financial shuffle

At Four Seasons, the speed of change was dizzying. From 2004 to 2017, big money came and went, with revenue at times threaded through multiple offshore vehicles. Among the groups that owned Four Seasons, in part or in its entirety: British private equity firm Alchemy Partners; Allianz Capital Partners, a German private equity firm; Three Delta, an investment fund backed by Qatar; the American hedge fund Monarch Alternative Capital; and Terra Firma, the British private equity group that wallowed in debt demands. H/2 Capital Partners, a hedge fund in Connecticut, was Four Seasons’ main creditor and took over. By 2019, Four Seasons was managed by insolvency experts.

Pressed on whether Four Seasons would exist in any form after the current sale of its property and businesses, MHP Communications, representing the company, said in an email: “It is too early in the process to speculate about the future of the brand.”

Vivek Kotecha, an accountant who has examined the Four Seasons financial shuffle and coauthored the Unison report, said private equity investment – in homes for older residents and, increasingly, in facilities for troubled children – is now part of the financial mainstream. The consulting firm McKinsey in 2022estimated that private markets manage nearly $10 trillion in assets, making them a dominant force in global markets.

“What you find in America with private equity is much the same here,” said Mr. Kotecha, the founder of Trinava Consulting in London. “They are often the same firms, doing the same things.” What was remarkable about Four Seasons was the enormous liability from high-yield bonds that underpinned the deal – one equaling $514 million at 8.75% interest and another for $277 million at 12.75% interest.

Guy Hands, the high-flying British founder of Terra Firma, bought Four Seasons in 2012, soon after losing an epic court battle with Citigroup over the purchase price of the music company EMI Group. Terra Firma acquired the care homes and then a gardening business with more than 100 stores. Neither proved easy, or good, bets. Hands, a Londoner who moved offshore to Guernsey, declined through a representative to discuss Four Seasons.

Mr. Kotecha, however, helped the BBC try to make sense of Four Seasons’ holdings by tracking financial filings. It was “the most complicated spreadsheet I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Kotecha said. “I think there were more subsidiaries involved in Four Seasons’ care homes than there were with General Motors in Europe.”

As Britain’s small homes were swept up in consolidations, some financial practices were dubious. At times, businesses sold the buildings as lease-back deals – not a problem at first – that, after multiple purchases, left operators paying rent with heavy interest that sapped operating budgets. By 2020, some care homes were estimated to be spending as much as 16% of their bed fees on debt payments, according to parliamentary testimony this year.

How could that happen? In part, for-profit providers – backed by private-equity groups and other corporations – had subsidiaries of their parent companies act as lender, setting the rates.

Britain’s elder care was unrecognizable within a generation. By 2022, private-equity companies alone accounted for 55,000 beds, or about 12.6% of the total for-profit care beds for older people in the United Kingdom, according to LaingBuisson, a health care consultancy. LaingBuisson calculated that the average residential care home fee as of February 2022 was about $44,700 a year; the average nursing home fee was $62,275 a year.

From 1980 to 2018, the number of residential care beds provided by local authorities fell 88% – from 141,719 to 17,100, according to the nonprofit Centre for Health and the Public Interest. Independent operators – nonprofits and for-profits – moved in, it said, controlling 243,000 beds by 2018. Nursing homes saw a similar shift: Private providers accounted for 194,100 beds in 2018, compared with 25,500 decades earlier.
 

Beyond government control

British lawmakers in the winter of 2021-2022 tried – and failed – to bolster financial reporting rules for care homes, including banning the use of government funds to pay off debt.

“I don’t have a problem with offshore companies that make profits if they offer good services. I don’t have a problem with private equity and hedge funds who deliver good returns to their shareholders,” Ros Altmann, a Conservative Party member in the House of Lords and a pension expert, said in a February debate. “I do have a problem if those companies are taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in our society without oversight, without controls.”

She cited Four Seasons as an example of how regulators “have no control over the financial models that are used.” Ms. Altmann warned that economic headwinds could worsen matters: “We now have very heavily debt-laden [homes] in an environment where interest rates are heading upward.”

In August, the Bank of England raised borrowing rates. It now forecasts double-digit inflation – as much as 11% – through 2023.

And that leaves care home owner Robert Kilgour pensive about whether government grasps the risks and possibilities that the sector is facing. “It’s a struggle, and it’s becoming more of a struggle,” he said. A global energy crisis is the latest unexpected emergency. Mr. Kilgour said he recently signed electricity contracts, for April 2023, at rates that will rise by 200%. That means an extra $2,400 a day in utility costs for his homes.

Mr. Kilgour founded Four Seasons, opening its first home, in Fife, Scotland, in 1989. His ambition for its growth was modest: “Ten by 2000.” That changed in 1999 when Alchemy swooped in to expand nationally. Mr. Kilgour had left Four Seasons by 2004, turning to other ventures.

Still, he saw opportunity in elder care and opened Renaissance Care, which now operates 16 homes with 750 beds in Scotland. “I missed it,” he said in an interview in London. “It’s people and it’s property, and I like that.”

“People asked me if I had any regrets about selling to private equity. Well, no, the people I dealt with were very fair, very straight. There were no shenanigans,” Mr. Kilgour said, noting that Alchemy made money but invested as well.

Mr. Kilgour said the pandemic motivated him to improve his business. He is spending millions on new LED lighting and boilers, as well as training staffers on digital record-keeping, all to winnow costs. He increased hourly wages by 5%, but employees have suggested other ways to retain staff: shorter shifts and workdays that fit school schedules or allow them to care for their own older relatives.

Debates over whether the government should move back into elder care make little sense to Mr. Kilgour. Britain has had private care for decades, and he doesn’t see that changing. Instead, operators need help balancing private and publicly funded beds “so you have a blended rate for care and some certainty in the business.”

Consolidations are slowing, he said, which might be part of a long-overdue reckoning. “The idea of 200, 300, 400 care homes – that big is good and big is best – those days are gone,” Mr. Kilgour said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Pulmonologist-scientist Veena B. Antony, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, grows “pulmospheres” in her lab. The tiny spheres, about 1 mL in diameter, contain cells representing all of the cell types in a lung struck with pulmonary fibrosis.

They are a three-dimensional model of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) that can be used to study the behavior of invasive myofibroblasts and to predict in vivo responsiveness to antifibrotic drugs; they’re among an array of 3D models of parts of the lung – from lung “organoids” to “lung-on-a-chip” models – that are moving pulmonary research forward and poised to affect toxicity testing, drug development, and other areas.

Courtesy Lexi Coon/UAB

“The utility is extensive, including looking at the impact of early-life exposures on mid-life lung disease. We can ask all kinds of questions and answer them much faster, and with more accuracy, than with any 2D model,” said Dr. Antony, also professor of environmental health sciences and director of UAB’s program for environmental and translational medicine.

“The future of 3D modeling of the lung will happen step by step ... but we’re right at the edge of a prime explosion of information coming from these models, in all kinds of lung diseases,” she said.

Two-dimensional model systems – mainly monolayer cell cultures where cells adhere to and grow on a plate – cannot approximate the variety of cell types and architecture found in tissue, nor can they recapitulate cell-cell communication, biochemical cues, and other factors that are key to lung development and the pathogenesis of disease.

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres resemble what have come to be known as organoids – 3D tissue cultures emanating from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) or adult stem cells, in which multiple cell types self-organize, usually while suspended in natural or synthetic extracellular matrix (with or without a scaffold of some kind).
 

Lung-on-a-chip

In lung-on-a-chip (LOC) models, multiple cell types are seeded into miniature chambers, or “chips,” that contain networks of microfabricated channels designed to deliver and remove fluids, chemical cues, oxygen, and biomechanical forces. LOCs and other organs-on-chips – also called tissues-on-chips – can be continuously perfused and are highly structured and precisely controlled.

It’s the organs-on-chip model – or potential fusions of the organoid and organs-on-chip models – that will likely impact drug development. Almost 9 out of 10 investigational drugs fail in clinical trials – approximately 60% because of lack of efficacy and 30% because of toxicity. More reliable and predictive preclinical investigation is key, said Danilo A. Tagle, PhD, director of the Office of Special Initiatives in the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health.

“We have so many candidate drugs that go through preclinical safety testing, and that do relatively well in animal studies of efficacy, but then fail in clinical trials,” Dr. Tagle said. “We need better preclinical models.”

In its 10 years of life, the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program led by the NCATS – and funded by the NIH and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has shown that organs-on-chips can be used to model disease and to predict both the safety and efficacy of clinical compounds, he said.
 

Lung organoids

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres emanate not from stem cells but from primary tissue obtained from diseased lung. “We reconstitute the lung cells in single-cell suspensions, and then we allow them to come back together to form lung tissue,” she said. The pulmospheres take about 3 days to grow.

In a study published 5 years ago of pulmospheres of 20 patients with IPF and 9 control subjects, Dr. Antony and colleagues quantitated invasiveness and found “remarkable” differences in the invasiveness of IPF pulmospheres following exposure to the Food and Drug Administration–approved antifibrotic drugs nintedanib and pirfenidone. Some pulmospheres responded to one or the other drug, some to both, and two to neither – findings that Dr. Antony said offer hope for the goals of personalizing therapy and assessing new drugs.

Moreover, clinical disease progression correlated with invasiveness of the pulmospheres, showing that the organoid-like structures “do give us a model that [reflects] what’s happening in the clinical setting,” she said. (Lung tissue for the study was obtained via video-assisted thoracic surgery biopsy of IPF patients and from failed donor lung explants, but bronchoscopic forceps biopsies have become a useful method for obtaining tissue.)

The pulmospheres are not yet in clinical use, Dr. Antony said, but her lab is testing other fibrosis modifiers and continuing to use the model as a research tool.

One state to the east, at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Amanda Linkous, PhD, grows “branching lung organoids” and brain organoids to study the biology of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

LOC models

One of the first LOC models – and a galvanizing event for organs-on-chips more broadly – was a 1- to 2-cm–long model of the alveolar-capillary interface developed at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Microchannels ran alongside a porous membrane coated with extracellular matrix, with alveolar cells seeded on one side and lung endothelial cells on the other side. When a vacuum was applied rhythmically to the channels, the cell-lined membrane stretched and relaxed, mimicking breathing movements.

Lead investigator Dongeun (Dan) Huh, PhD, then a postdoctoral student working with Donald E. Ingber, MD, PhD, founding director of the institute, ran tests showing that the model could reproduce organ-level responses to bacteria and inflammatory cytokines, as well as to silica nanoparticles. The widely cited paper was published in 2010 (Science. 2010;328[5986]:1662-8), and was followed by another study published in 2012 (Sci Transl Med. 2012;4[159]:159ra147) that used the LOC device to reproduce drug toxicity–induced pulmonary edema. “Here we were demonstrating for the first time that we could use the lung-on-chip to model human lung disease,” said Dr. Huh, who started his own lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 2013.

Since then, “as a field we’ve come a long way in modeling the complexity of human lung tissues ... with more advanced devices that can be used to mimic different parts of the lung and different processes, like immune responses in asthma and viral infections,” said Dr. Huh, “and with several studies using primary human cells taken from lung disease patients.”

BIOLines Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania

Government investment in tissue chips

Efforts to commercialize organs-on-chip platforms and translate them for nonengineers have also picked in recent years. Several companies in the United States (including Emulate, a Wyss start-up) and in Europe now offer microengineered lung tissue models that can be used for research and drug testing. And some large pharmaceutical companies, said Dr. Tagle, have begun integrating tissue chip technology into their drug development programs.

The FDA, meanwhile, “has come to embrace the technology and see its promise,” Dr. Tagle said. An FDA pilot program announced in 2021 – called ISTAND (Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs) – allows for tissue chip data to be submitted, as standalone data, for some drug applications.

The first 5 years of the government’s Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program focused on safety and toxicity, and it “was successful in that model organ systems were able to capture the human response that [had been missed in] animal models,” he said.

For example, when a liver-tissue model was used to test several compounds that had passed animal testing for toxicity/safety but then failed in human clinical trials – killing some of the participants – the model showed a 100% sensitivity and a 87% specificity in predicting the human response, said Dr. Tagle, who recently coauthored a review on the future of organs-on-chips (Nature Reviews I Drug Discovery. 2021;20:345-61).

The second 5 years of the program, currently winding down, have focused on efficacy – the ability of organs-on-chip models to recreate the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, influenza, and other diseases, so that potential drugs can be assessed. In 2020, with extra support from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, NCATS funded academic labs to use organs-on-chip technology to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 and potential therapeutics.

Dr. Ingbar was one of the grantees. His team screened a number of FDA-approved drugs for potential repurposing using a bronchial-airway-on-a-chip and compared results with 2D model systems (Nat Biomed Eng. 2021;5:815-29). Amodiaquine inhibited infection in the 3D model and is now in phase 2 COVID trials. Several other drugs showed effectiveness in a 2D model but not in the chip.

Now, in a next phase of study at NCATS, coined Clinical Trials on a Chip, the center has awarded $35.5 million for investigators to test candidate therapies, often in parallel to ongoing clinical trials. The hope is that organs-on-chips can improve clinical trial design, from enrollment criteria and patient stratification to endpoints and the use of biomarkers. And in his lab, Dr. Huh is now engineering a shift to “organoids-on-a-chip” that combines the best features of each approach. “The idea,” he said, “is to grow organoids, and maintain the organoids in the microengineered systems where we can control their environment better ... and apply cues to allow them to develop into even more realistic tissues.”

Drs. Antony, Linkous, and Tagle reported no relevant disclosures. Dr. Huh is a co-founder of Vivodyne Inc, and owns shares in Vivodyne Inc. and Emulate Inc.

Pulmonologist-scientist Veena B. Antony, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, grows “pulmospheres” in her lab. The tiny spheres, about 1 mL in diameter, contain cells representing all of the cell types in a lung struck with pulmonary fibrosis.

They are a three-dimensional model of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) that can be used to study the behavior of invasive myofibroblasts and to predict in vivo responsiveness to antifibrotic drugs; they’re among an array of 3D models of parts of the lung – from lung “organoids” to “lung-on-a-chip” models – that are moving pulmonary research forward and poised to affect toxicity testing, drug development, and other areas.

Courtesy Lexi Coon/UAB

“The utility is extensive, including looking at the impact of early-life exposures on mid-life lung disease. We can ask all kinds of questions and answer them much faster, and with more accuracy, than with any 2D model,” said Dr. Antony, also professor of environmental health sciences and director of UAB’s program for environmental and translational medicine.

“The future of 3D modeling of the lung will happen step by step ... but we’re right at the edge of a prime explosion of information coming from these models, in all kinds of lung diseases,” she said.

Two-dimensional model systems – mainly monolayer cell cultures where cells adhere to and grow on a plate – cannot approximate the variety of cell types and architecture found in tissue, nor can they recapitulate cell-cell communication, biochemical cues, and other factors that are key to lung development and the pathogenesis of disease.

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres resemble what have come to be known as organoids – 3D tissue cultures emanating from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) or adult stem cells, in which multiple cell types self-organize, usually while suspended in natural or synthetic extracellular matrix (with or without a scaffold of some kind).
 

Lung-on-a-chip

In lung-on-a-chip (LOC) models, multiple cell types are seeded into miniature chambers, or “chips,” that contain networks of microfabricated channels designed to deliver and remove fluids, chemical cues, oxygen, and biomechanical forces. LOCs and other organs-on-chips – also called tissues-on-chips – can be continuously perfused and are highly structured and precisely controlled.

It’s the organs-on-chip model – or potential fusions of the organoid and organs-on-chip models – that will likely impact drug development. Almost 9 out of 10 investigational drugs fail in clinical trials – approximately 60% because of lack of efficacy and 30% because of toxicity. More reliable and predictive preclinical investigation is key, said Danilo A. Tagle, PhD, director of the Office of Special Initiatives in the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health.

“We have so many candidate drugs that go through preclinical safety testing, and that do relatively well in animal studies of efficacy, but then fail in clinical trials,” Dr. Tagle said. “We need better preclinical models.”

In its 10 years of life, the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program led by the NCATS – and funded by the NIH and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has shown that organs-on-chips can be used to model disease and to predict both the safety and efficacy of clinical compounds, he said.
 

Lung organoids

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres emanate not from stem cells but from primary tissue obtained from diseased lung. “We reconstitute the lung cells in single-cell suspensions, and then we allow them to come back together to form lung tissue,” she said. The pulmospheres take about 3 days to grow.

In a study published 5 years ago of pulmospheres of 20 patients with IPF and 9 control subjects, Dr. Antony and colleagues quantitated invasiveness and found “remarkable” differences in the invasiveness of IPF pulmospheres following exposure to the Food and Drug Administration–approved antifibrotic drugs nintedanib and pirfenidone. Some pulmospheres responded to one or the other drug, some to both, and two to neither – findings that Dr. Antony said offer hope for the goals of personalizing therapy and assessing new drugs.

Moreover, clinical disease progression correlated with invasiveness of the pulmospheres, showing that the organoid-like structures “do give us a model that [reflects] what’s happening in the clinical setting,” she said. (Lung tissue for the study was obtained via video-assisted thoracic surgery biopsy of IPF patients and from failed donor lung explants, but bronchoscopic forceps biopsies have become a useful method for obtaining tissue.)

The pulmospheres are not yet in clinical use, Dr. Antony said, but her lab is testing other fibrosis modifiers and continuing to use the model as a research tool.

One state to the east, at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Amanda Linkous, PhD, grows “branching lung organoids” and brain organoids to study the biology of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

LOC models

One of the first LOC models – and a galvanizing event for organs-on-chips more broadly – was a 1- to 2-cm–long model of the alveolar-capillary interface developed at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Microchannels ran alongside a porous membrane coated with extracellular matrix, with alveolar cells seeded on one side and lung endothelial cells on the other side. When a vacuum was applied rhythmically to the channels, the cell-lined membrane stretched and relaxed, mimicking breathing movements.

Lead investigator Dongeun (Dan) Huh, PhD, then a postdoctoral student working with Donald E. Ingber, MD, PhD, founding director of the institute, ran tests showing that the model could reproduce organ-level responses to bacteria and inflammatory cytokines, as well as to silica nanoparticles. The widely cited paper was published in 2010 (Science. 2010;328[5986]:1662-8), and was followed by another study published in 2012 (Sci Transl Med. 2012;4[159]:159ra147) that used the LOC device to reproduce drug toxicity–induced pulmonary edema. “Here we were demonstrating for the first time that we could use the lung-on-chip to model human lung disease,” said Dr. Huh, who started his own lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 2013.

Since then, “as a field we’ve come a long way in modeling the complexity of human lung tissues ... with more advanced devices that can be used to mimic different parts of the lung and different processes, like immune responses in asthma and viral infections,” said Dr. Huh, “and with several studies using primary human cells taken from lung disease patients.”

BIOLines Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania

Government investment in tissue chips

Efforts to commercialize organs-on-chip platforms and translate them for nonengineers have also picked in recent years. Several companies in the United States (including Emulate, a Wyss start-up) and in Europe now offer microengineered lung tissue models that can be used for research and drug testing. And some large pharmaceutical companies, said Dr. Tagle, have begun integrating tissue chip technology into their drug development programs.

The FDA, meanwhile, “has come to embrace the technology and see its promise,” Dr. Tagle said. An FDA pilot program announced in 2021 – called ISTAND (Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs) – allows for tissue chip data to be submitted, as standalone data, for some drug applications.

The first 5 years of the government’s Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program focused on safety and toxicity, and it “was successful in that model organ systems were able to capture the human response that [had been missed in] animal models,” he said.

For example, when a liver-tissue model was used to test several compounds that had passed animal testing for toxicity/safety but then failed in human clinical trials – killing some of the participants – the model showed a 100% sensitivity and a 87% specificity in predicting the human response, said Dr. Tagle, who recently coauthored a review on the future of organs-on-chips (Nature Reviews I Drug Discovery. 2021;20:345-61).

The second 5 years of the program, currently winding down, have focused on efficacy – the ability of organs-on-chip models to recreate the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, influenza, and other diseases, so that potential drugs can be assessed. In 2020, with extra support from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, NCATS funded academic labs to use organs-on-chip technology to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 and potential therapeutics.

Dr. Ingbar was one of the grantees. His team screened a number of FDA-approved drugs for potential repurposing using a bronchial-airway-on-a-chip and compared results with 2D model systems (Nat Biomed Eng. 2021;5:815-29). Amodiaquine inhibited infection in the 3D model and is now in phase 2 COVID trials. Several other drugs showed effectiveness in a 2D model but not in the chip.

Now, in a next phase of study at NCATS, coined Clinical Trials on a Chip, the center has awarded $35.5 million for investigators to test candidate therapies, often in parallel to ongoing clinical trials. The hope is that organs-on-chips can improve clinical trial design, from enrollment criteria and patient stratification to endpoints and the use of biomarkers. And in his lab, Dr. Huh is now engineering a shift to “organoids-on-a-chip” that combines the best features of each approach. “The idea,” he said, “is to grow organoids, and maintain the organoids in the microengineered systems where we can control their environment better ... and apply cues to allow them to develop into even more realistic tissues.”

Drs. Antony, Linkous, and Tagle reported no relevant disclosures. Dr. Huh is a co-founder of Vivodyne Inc, and owns shares in Vivodyne Inc. and Emulate Inc.

Pulmonologist-scientist Veena B. Antony, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, grows “pulmospheres” in her lab. The tiny spheres, about 1 mL in diameter, contain cells representing all of the cell types in a lung struck with pulmonary fibrosis.

They are a three-dimensional model of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) that can be used to study the behavior of invasive myofibroblasts and to predict in vivo responsiveness to antifibrotic drugs; they’re among an array of 3D models of parts of the lung – from lung “organoids” to “lung-on-a-chip” models – that are moving pulmonary research forward and poised to affect toxicity testing, drug development, and other areas.

Courtesy Lexi Coon/UAB

“The utility is extensive, including looking at the impact of early-life exposures on mid-life lung disease. We can ask all kinds of questions and answer them much faster, and with more accuracy, than with any 2D model,” said Dr. Antony, also professor of environmental health sciences and director of UAB’s program for environmental and translational medicine.

“The future of 3D modeling of the lung will happen step by step ... but we’re right at the edge of a prime explosion of information coming from these models, in all kinds of lung diseases,” she said.

Two-dimensional model systems – mainly monolayer cell cultures where cells adhere to and grow on a plate – cannot approximate the variety of cell types and architecture found in tissue, nor can they recapitulate cell-cell communication, biochemical cues, and other factors that are key to lung development and the pathogenesis of disease.

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres resemble what have come to be known as organoids – 3D tissue cultures emanating from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) or adult stem cells, in which multiple cell types self-organize, usually while suspended in natural or synthetic extracellular matrix (with or without a scaffold of some kind).
 

Lung-on-a-chip

In lung-on-a-chip (LOC) models, multiple cell types are seeded into miniature chambers, or “chips,” that contain networks of microfabricated channels designed to deliver and remove fluids, chemical cues, oxygen, and biomechanical forces. LOCs and other organs-on-chips – also called tissues-on-chips – can be continuously perfused and are highly structured and precisely controlled.

It’s the organs-on-chip model – or potential fusions of the organoid and organs-on-chip models – that will likely impact drug development. Almost 9 out of 10 investigational drugs fail in clinical trials – approximately 60% because of lack of efficacy and 30% because of toxicity. More reliable and predictive preclinical investigation is key, said Danilo A. Tagle, PhD, director of the Office of Special Initiatives in the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health.

“We have so many candidate drugs that go through preclinical safety testing, and that do relatively well in animal studies of efficacy, but then fail in clinical trials,” Dr. Tagle said. “We need better preclinical models.”

In its 10 years of life, the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program led by the NCATS – and funded by the NIH and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has shown that organs-on-chips can be used to model disease and to predict both the safety and efficacy of clinical compounds, he said.
 

Lung organoids

Dr. Antony’s pulmospheres emanate not from stem cells but from primary tissue obtained from diseased lung. “We reconstitute the lung cells in single-cell suspensions, and then we allow them to come back together to form lung tissue,” she said. The pulmospheres take about 3 days to grow.

In a study published 5 years ago of pulmospheres of 20 patients with IPF and 9 control subjects, Dr. Antony and colleagues quantitated invasiveness and found “remarkable” differences in the invasiveness of IPF pulmospheres following exposure to the Food and Drug Administration–approved antifibrotic drugs nintedanib and pirfenidone. Some pulmospheres responded to one or the other drug, some to both, and two to neither – findings that Dr. Antony said offer hope for the goals of personalizing therapy and assessing new drugs.

Moreover, clinical disease progression correlated with invasiveness of the pulmospheres, showing that the organoid-like structures “do give us a model that [reflects] what’s happening in the clinical setting,” she said. (Lung tissue for the study was obtained via video-assisted thoracic surgery biopsy of IPF patients and from failed donor lung explants, but bronchoscopic forceps biopsies have become a useful method for obtaining tissue.)

The pulmospheres are not yet in clinical use, Dr. Antony said, but her lab is testing other fibrosis modifiers and continuing to use the model as a research tool.

One state to the east, at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Amanda Linkous, PhD, grows “branching lung organoids” and brain organoids to study the biology of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

Courtesy Dr. Amanda Linkous

LOC models

One of the first LOC models – and a galvanizing event for organs-on-chips more broadly – was a 1- to 2-cm–long model of the alveolar-capillary interface developed at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Microchannels ran alongside a porous membrane coated with extracellular matrix, with alveolar cells seeded on one side and lung endothelial cells on the other side. When a vacuum was applied rhythmically to the channels, the cell-lined membrane stretched and relaxed, mimicking breathing movements.

Lead investigator Dongeun (Dan) Huh, PhD, then a postdoctoral student working with Donald E. Ingber, MD, PhD, founding director of the institute, ran tests showing that the model could reproduce organ-level responses to bacteria and inflammatory cytokines, as well as to silica nanoparticles. The widely cited paper was published in 2010 (Science. 2010;328[5986]:1662-8), and was followed by another study published in 2012 (Sci Transl Med. 2012;4[159]:159ra147) that used the LOC device to reproduce drug toxicity–induced pulmonary edema. “Here we were demonstrating for the first time that we could use the lung-on-chip to model human lung disease,” said Dr. Huh, who started his own lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 2013.

Since then, “as a field we’ve come a long way in modeling the complexity of human lung tissues ... with more advanced devices that can be used to mimic different parts of the lung and different processes, like immune responses in asthma and viral infections,” said Dr. Huh, “and with several studies using primary human cells taken from lung disease patients.”

BIOLines Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania

Government investment in tissue chips

Efforts to commercialize organs-on-chip platforms and translate them for nonengineers have also picked in recent years. Several companies in the United States (including Emulate, a Wyss start-up) and in Europe now offer microengineered lung tissue models that can be used for research and drug testing. And some large pharmaceutical companies, said Dr. Tagle, have begun integrating tissue chip technology into their drug development programs.

The FDA, meanwhile, “has come to embrace the technology and see its promise,” Dr. Tagle said. An FDA pilot program announced in 2021 – called ISTAND (Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs) – allows for tissue chip data to be submitted, as standalone data, for some drug applications.

The first 5 years of the government’s Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program focused on safety and toxicity, and it “was successful in that model organ systems were able to capture the human response that [had been missed in] animal models,” he said.

For example, when a liver-tissue model was used to test several compounds that had passed animal testing for toxicity/safety but then failed in human clinical trials – killing some of the participants – the model showed a 100% sensitivity and a 87% specificity in predicting the human response, said Dr. Tagle, who recently coauthored a review on the future of organs-on-chips (Nature Reviews I Drug Discovery. 2021;20:345-61).

The second 5 years of the program, currently winding down, have focused on efficacy – the ability of organs-on-chip models to recreate the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, influenza, and other diseases, so that potential drugs can be assessed. In 2020, with extra support from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, NCATS funded academic labs to use organs-on-chip technology to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 and potential therapeutics.

Dr. Ingbar was one of the grantees. His team screened a number of FDA-approved drugs for potential repurposing using a bronchial-airway-on-a-chip and compared results with 2D model systems (Nat Biomed Eng. 2021;5:815-29). Amodiaquine inhibited infection in the 3D model and is now in phase 2 COVID trials. Several other drugs showed effectiveness in a 2D model but not in the chip.

Now, in a next phase of study at NCATS, coined Clinical Trials on a Chip, the center has awarded $35.5 million for investigators to test candidate therapies, often in parallel to ongoing clinical trials. The hope is that organs-on-chips can improve clinical trial design, from enrollment criteria and patient stratification to endpoints and the use of biomarkers. And in his lab, Dr. Huh is now engineering a shift to “organoids-on-a-chip” that combines the best features of each approach. “The idea,” he said, “is to grow organoids, and maintain the organoids in the microengineered systems where we can control their environment better ... and apply cues to allow them to develop into even more realistic tissues.”

Drs. Antony, Linkous, and Tagle reported no relevant disclosures. Dr. Huh is a co-founder of Vivodyne Inc, and owns shares in Vivodyne Inc. and Emulate Inc.