Our Research
As a public benefit company, Waymark is committed to learning from our research, sharing our findings, and moving community-based care forward.
Advancing Access to Care in Washington State
Access to quality primary care is associated with improved health outcomes and lower medical costs, but social determinants of health (SDOH) can impact access to care. Patients with the greatest risk for poor health outcomes may be disconnected from primary care. Connecting these patients to primary care improves health outcomes reduces emergency department utilization and reduces total cost of care.
Value Veneers and How To Enable Value In Medicaid Care Delivery
Here, we argue that adoption of value-based care (VBC) in Medicaid has been limited due to a lack of revenue optimization opportunities via risk adjustment, the complexity of implementing VBC models across state Medicaid programs, high member churn, and the growth of “value veneers,” or modest value-based arrangements that nominally pass as VBC but do not meaningfully alter care delivery.
Estimated Costs of Intervening in Health-Related Social Needs Detected in Primary Care
In this decision analytical model, the cost of providing evidence-based interventions for social needs averaged $60 per member per month. The findings of this study suggest that a substantial increase in resources would be needed to implement a comprehensive approach to addressing social needs that falls largely outside of existing federal financing mechanisms.
Eliminating Food Insecurity in the USA: A Target Trial Emulation Using Observational Data to Estimate Effects on Health-Related Quality of Life
Food insecurity is associated with many aspects of poor health but trials of food insecurity interventions typically focus on outcomes of interest to funders rather than quality of life outcomes that may be prioritized by individuals who experience food insecurity. Our findings show that food insecurity elimination may improve important, but understudied, aspects of health.
Financing Health Care System Interventions Addressing Social Risks
Social determinants of health affect the distribution of individual-level social risks to health, such as food and housing instability, and inadequate transportation. For these reasons, those in the health care system are increasingly seeking to help with social risks, often by working with agencies and community-based organizations for multi sector collaboration.
Does Primary Care Availability Mediate the Relationship Between Rurality and Lower Life Expectancy in the United States?
PCP density is a meaningful mediator of the relationship between urbanity and life expectancy. The mediation effect observed was higher in rural counties compared to all counties. Understanding how PCP density may be increased in rural areas may be of critical benefit to rural life expectancy.
Bounds on the Conditional and Average Treatment Effect with Unobserved Confounding Factors
For observational studies, we study the sensitivity of causal inference when treatment assignments may depend on unobserved confounders and develop a loss minimization approach. Our approach is scalable and allows flexible use of model classes in estimation, including nonparametric and black-box machine learning methods. Based on these bounds for the conditional average treatment effect, we propose a sensitivity analysis for the average treatment effect.
How the Gender Wage Gap for Primary Care Physicians Differs by Compensation Approach : A Microsimulation Study
We studied the gender wage gap between male and female physicians using a large national practice survey. We observed that the gap varied by whether physicians were compensated by fee-for-service or value-based capitated payments. Additionally, we found that other future models might better align with primary care effort and outcomes.
Catastrophic Spending On Insulin In The United States, 2017–18
Insulin is considered an essential medicine for people with diabetes, but its price has doubled during the past decade, posing substantial financial barriers to patients in the US. We studied out-of-pocket spending on insulin, considering possible risk factors impacting the likelihood of someone experiencing catastrophic spending (spending more than 40 percent of post-subsistence family income on insulin).
