While the nation has been hit hard by opioid use disorder, those suffering from opioid use disorder in rural areas face increased barriers to recovery — they must travel long distances to receive treatment, and oftentimes have difficulty finding a clinician available to administer medication-assisted treatment.

Now, the Department of Health and Human Services has new materials to help clarify how clinicians can use telemedicine as a tool to treat more patients with opioid use disorder with buprenorphine. These materials especially support those in rural areas, in which a smaller number of providers have a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine.  (Source: HHS; Photo: Harbin on Wikimedia) 

A new report tracks healthcare quality of, access to, and disparities in Wisconsin health care across more than 300 measures. Wisconsin was in the highest quartile for overall quality of care, but it also ranked as one of the states with the most racial and ethnic disparities in care. (Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

Direct primary care is a healthcare model in which patients pay membership fees to doctors rather than insurance companies. Twenty-five states have passed legislation generally defining direct primary care and its limits, but in Wisconsin, no state law regulating direct primary care currently exists. 
 

Last year, a proposal on direct primary care passed the state Assembly, but failed to move forward in the Senate. The bill would have defined direct primary care, made clear that the practice is not insurance, and directed the Department of Health Services to consider piloting a program under Medicaid. 
 

Now, lawmakers are planning to reintroduce the proposal in the next legislative session. Wisconsin is one of five states to have introduced DPC legislation but not enacted those bills into law. To read more about the impact and implications of direct primary care in Wisconsin, read a recent policy brief prepared by the Population Health Institute for a legislative study on the topic. And, WisContext examines the model in other states.

About 32 percent of Wisconsin adults are obese, according to data released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That matches approximately with the rate of obesity in twenty-two other states — between 30 and 35 percent. Twenty-one other states were less obese, and seven states had an obesity rate higher than Wisconsin's. No state had an obesity rate of less than 20% for 2017. Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Obesity Prevention Initiative released statistics on the rate of obesity in Wisconsin by ZIP code. 

Rural employees who care for elderly family members are less likely than their urban counterparts to receive helpful workplace benefits like flex time, paid leave or the option of telecommuting. And rural caregivers are also likely to face special geographic challenges in the process. In fact, all of the issues around caregiving are heightened in rural areas, says Carrie Henning-Smith, co-author of a new study examining the barriers rural caregivers face. (Source: The Daily Yonder; Image: "A National Examination of Caregiver Use of and Preferences for Support Services: Does Rurality Matter?" published in the Journal of Aging and Health) 

Starting next month, Medicare will ease up on its annual readmissions penalties for hundreds of hospitals serving large populations of low-income patients. Medicare has punished hospitals that have too many patients end up back in their care, as part of a move in the Affordable Care Act intended to encourage better care. 
 

At the direction of Congress, Medicare will now take into account a long-standing complaint from safety-net hospitals that serve more low-income patients — that their patients are more likely to suffer complications after leaving the hospital, through no fault of the institution but other factors related to a lack of insurance. (Source: National Public Radio; Image: rawpixel on Unsplash) 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) announced this week the state has been awarded a two-year federal grant totaling nearly $24 million to support a comprehensive response to the opioid crisis in Wisconsin. The funding comes from a federal grant of more than $930 million that's distributed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and will go to opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery programs across the state. (Source: Wisconsin Department of Health Services; Photo: Cindy Shebley on flickr) 

Wisconsin ranked fourth in a ranking of the nation's health plans, released last week by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, an independent nonprofit organization.
 

One commercial plan, the Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin, received a 5 out of 5, where 5 indicates higher performance. Others, such as Dean Health Plan, HealthPartners, Medical Associates and Unity all received a rating of 4.5 out of 5, and thirteen other commercial plans received a 4 out of 5. One Wisconsin Medicare plan, the Group Health Plan run by HealthPartners, received a rating of 5 out of 5. 
 

The rankings looked at the performance of the insurance plans across three metrics: consumer satisfaction, prevention, and treatment. Consumer satisfaction seemed to be the weakest metric across most commercial plans in Wisconsin. See how all the plans measure up here.

Congress has less than a week to pass the new farm bill before the current law expires at the end of the month. According to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas, Congress is also unlikely to meet that deadline, or get the legislation passed before the November 6th election.

The legislation is reportedly stuck in a debate over whether or not the federal food stamp program, called the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, ought to impose work requirements for able-bodied adults participating in the program. The House version of the bill includes work requirements for SNAP, while the Senate version does not. (Source: Ryan McCrimmon/ Politico) 

In a video posted earlier this month, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the Farm Bill is "a perfect opportunity" to get twelve-million able-bodied young people "off of the sidelines" and into the workforce and schools. (Source: House.gov)