PRIMARY CARE DIP — Demand for health care is still “tepid” after the pandemic’s peak, and Americans still haven’t returned to getting preventive care at the levels they were pre-pandemic, according to a new analysis from data firm Trilliant Health. Primary care visits fell more than 6 percent between 2021 and 2022, continuing a long-standing dip in primary care visits. Urgent care visits rose nearly 14 percent between 2021 and 2022, Trilliant’s data found, while emergency department visits — which can be costly — rose more than 3 percent. Trilliant’s chief research officer, Sanjula Jain, warned that the decline in demand could hurt stakeholders across the sector, especially providers and device manufacturers. The pandemic and the restrictions that came with it led many to fear that patients would skip getting care, and some data has suggested that such care might never be made up. Questions still remain about whether this trend will continue, though. “Just as we see back-to-office rates and travel statistics beginning to rebound, people may have gotten out of the habit of preventive care during the pandemic but will pick it back up over time. It feels like it’s too early to know for sure,” Dr. Bob Wachter, head of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Pulse. Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who has focused on health care economics, told Pulse that while some preventive care is handled by pharmacies, it’s not necessarily comparable. “This leads to fragmentation of care and will lead to access challenges,” Schulman said. He argued that the primary care payment model doesn’t sufficiently reward high-quality primary care and health systems aren’t investing as much in primary care as in other lucrative services like cancer care. “Since 52 percent of physicians now work for health care systems, this is a worrisome trend,” Schulman said. Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a health policy and medicine professor at Harvard, said it’s not clear yet that the decline in preventive care is a “bad trend,” arguing it could indicate a decline in unnecessary visits. From the Hill: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, advanced primary care legislation aiming to strengthen the sector last month despite opposition from ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.). WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE. New research suggests that ransomware attacks have cost the U.S. health care sector more than $77 billion in downtime since 2016. Reach us at bleonard@politico.com or ccirruzzo@politico.com. Follow along @_BenLeonard_ and @ChelseaCirruzzo. TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST, your host Ben talks with POLITICO health care reporter Robert King, who explains why some state insurance commissioners want Congress to restore their authority to regulate Medicare Advantage marketing.
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