Today, we're diving deep into a crucial aspect of preventive healthcare: the Annual Wellness Visit. Our guest is Dr. Christopher Wheelock, a clinical transformation physician executive at Highmark Health, responsible for developing payer and provider collaborations to move toward value-based care. In the past, he was heavily involved with developing the workflow, patient scripting and templating for the Annual Wellness Visit when CMS first established it in 2011 as part of the Affordable Care Act.

In today’s episode, Dr. Wheelock sheds light on the various elements of the Annual Wellness Visit, including self-assessments of psychosocial issues and screenings for conditions like dementia and incontinence. He also explains the expansion of services in 2025 for Medicare beneficiaries.

We also explore the intricacies of coding and billing for these visits, especially if they go beyond the scope of the Annual Wellness Visit; the value they bring to patients, providers, and payers; and the critical role of effective communication and preparation to maximize the benefit of the Annual Wellness Visit.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with Allison Ju-Chen Hu, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Her study, "Medicaid Managed Care Network Adequacy Standards and Mental Health Care Access," examined the association between quantitative network adequacy standards (NAS) and mental health care access among adult Medicaid enrollees, including those with mental health conditions.

Joining us for this episode of Managed Care Cast is Robert H. Hopkins, Jr, MD, mnedical director at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and NFID liaison to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, who will help separate fact from fiction about avian influenza and discuss what needs to be done to prevent a future escalation.

Today, we do a deep dive into psychedelic-assisted therapy with Jessica Tracy, head of Growth and Partnerships at Enthea. She shares how employers and unions can support mental health and address access barriers to evidence-based ketamine treatments.

March 11, 2025, will mark 5 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Between January 22, 2020, and March 10, 2023, Johns Hopkins University recorded over 676 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide and more than 6.8 million related deaths. In the US alone, it reported over 103 million cases and more than 1 million deaths during this timeframe.

Although the WHO declared an end to the public health emergency on May 5, 2023, followed by the CDC on May 11, COVID-19 continues to impact thousands of individuals worldwide.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're speaking with Jenny Han, MD, a COVID-19 expert from Emory School of Medicine and Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. We'll explore the current state of COVID-19, including risk factors, treatments, and the impacts of long COVID. We will also discuss prevention strategies, vaccination efforts, and future steps to improve COVID-19 care and outcomes.

The editors in chief of The American Journal of Managed Care® discuss the key managed care research and news from 2024 and look forward to the journal’s upcoming 30th anniversary.

Today we are bringing you a conversation on treatment with Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors for patients with treatment-naïve chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA, CPEL, vice president of ambulatory pharmacy at Emory Healthcare and Winship Cancer Institute, spoke with 3 experts: Tara Graff, DO, medical oncologist, Mission Cancer and Blood; Jacqueline Barrientos, MD, MS, chief, Hematologic Malignancies, and director, Oncology Research at Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center; and Matthew Davids, MD, MMSc, director of Clinical Research, Division of Lymphoma, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School.

They covered a wide range of topics including the data on treatment regimens for both CLL and MCL, the cost of treatment, patient-specific considerations during treatment decision making, and the future of treatment.

Rachael Drake, pharmacy technician coordinator, University of Kansas Health System, explains how her team collaborates with insurance companies and providers to support patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma access treatment.

Among the latest data being presented at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, held December 7-10, 2024, in San Diego, California, were 3 abstracts that focused on patient preferences and treatment choices.

Sikander Ailawadhi, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the Mayo Clinic Florida was a coauthor on all 3 abstracts, covering patient preferences for Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and small lymphocytic lymphoma, survivorship burden and patient preferences affecting treatment choices in multiple myeloma, and race/ethnicity-specific sociodemographic and economic factors driving refusal of treatment in multiple myeloma.

Today we are bringing you insights from 3 separate interviews with experts about the treatment, management, and burdens of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

In this podcast, you’ll hear insight from the following individuals: Toby Maher, MD, PhD, professor of clinical medicine, Keck School of Medicine, USC; Martin Kolb, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, McMaster University; and Steven Nathan, MD, FCCP, medical director of the Advanced Lung Disease Program and Lung Transplant Program, Inova Fairfax Hospital, and professor of medicine, University of Virginia.

These experts discuss what IPF is, how it impacts patients’ quality of life, barriers to care, and treatments in the pipeline.