Managed Care Cast

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) was joined by Erin L. Duffy, PhD, MPH, an author of a study published in the June 2026 issue. She is a health policy researcher at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at the University of Southern California, with a focus on health care affordability, access to care, and how health systems can better serve patients.

Duffy’s study, "Availability of Hospital Financial Assistance Documents in Non-English Languages," found that nonprofit and system-affiliated hospitals have superior language access. During her conversation with AJMC, she discussed what inspired the research, the study's key findings, and ways to improve equitable access to information about financial assistance, regardless of language.

To conclude, Duffy previewed her study to be published in the July 2026 issue of AJMC, which builds on this work by evaluating the readability of financial assistance documents.

Most patients with metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) go undiagnosed until significant liver damage has already occurred, despite the availability of simple, guideline-supported screening tools that remain notoriously underused in both primary care and weight management settings. That's according to a conversation between Naim Alkhouri, MD, chief medical officer at Summit Clinical Research and director of the Steatotic Liver Disease Program at the Clinical Research Institute of Ohio, and Chika Anekwe, MD, obesity medicine clinical director at the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In this episode of Beyond the Silo: Integrated Care Across the CRM Continuum, the third installment in a series examining the cardio-renal-metabolic continuum, Alkhouri and Anekwe discuss why MASLD and its more aggressive form, metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis (MASH), belong alongside the heart and kidney in conversations about cardiometabolic risk. The pair walk through how Fibrosis-4 Index for Liver Fibrosis calculations can identify high-risk patients before liver damage becomes irreversible, why ownership of screening often falls through the cracks between primary care, obesity medicine, and specialty clinics, and how the recent FDA approvals of resmetirom and semaglutide for MASH have raised the urgency of early detection. The conversation also covers strategies for closing equity gaps in liver disease screening, including the role of telehealth and artificial intelligence in extending care to underserved and rural communities.

In this episode, Bhavana "Tina" Bhatnagar, DO, discusses how the field of acute myeloid leukemia has been fundamentally transformed; what this means for patients in rural, underserved settings; and where hematologic oncology is headed next.

Perry Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, watched epidemics emerge, witnessed governments fail to respond, and seen communities mobilize when institutions would not. From the early days of the AIDS crisis to COVID-19, Ebola, and beyond, he has drawn consistent lessons about what makes public health succeed and what causes it to collapse.

For patients with cancer, diagnosis doesn't just bring a physical battle. It can trigger a trauma response that can linger long after treatment ends, quietly reshaping how people sleep, think, and connect with the world around them.