Kara Gavin

5 days ago | michiganmedicine.org | Kara Gavin

More than half of older Americans now get their Medicare coverage through an insurance company’s Medicare Advantage plan. But many go on to switch plans or even leave for traditional Medicare when Open Enrollment comes around each autumn. Researchers have had a hard time getting access to data that could help them understand what drives these changes, which have major implications for federal spending on Medicare as well as individuals’ health.

5 days ago | michiganmedicine.org | Kara Gavin

The University of Michigan Medical School's effort to celebrate its history, including the preservation of a century-old building on U-M's main medical campus, has won recognition from Ann Arbor's Historic District Commission. The school is celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2025. The Simpson Memorial Institute building, constructed beginning in 1925, stands on Observatory Street at the top of Ann Street, near the Frankel Cardiovascular Center.

1 week ago | michiganmedicine.org | Kara Gavin

The third of the studies shows the power of teamwork in handling patient messages, by creating a framework for medical assistants, nurses of different training levels, and physicians to use to address in-basket messages more efficiently and effectively. All the authors are from the Division of General Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at U-M Health, which runs multiple primary care clinics across southeast Michigan for adults and mixed populations of children and adults.

3 weeks ago | record.umich.edu | Kara Gavin

A large percentage of American children are growing up in households with at least one parent who uses alcohol or other drugs in problematic ways — raising the risk that those children will go on to do the same, a new study suggests. Using data from 2023 to give as current a view as possible, the researchers estimate that 19 million children — 1 in 4 of Americans under age 18 — live with a parent or other adult who meets the definition for a substance use disorder.

1 month ago | michiganmedicine.org | Kara Gavin

No matter where you live in the United States, or where you get your health insurance, you probably know people who have Medicaid coverage for their health care. After all, Medicaid covers nearly 80 million people right now. Most of them are older adults, people with disabilities, children and pregnant women. But many others also rely on it too. That’s one out of every five people in the U.S., all of them with low incomes.