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Michael L. Barnett

@mlbarnett.bsky.social

2.1K followers 840 following 130 posts

health policy researcher, primary care physician, dad

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Political science 62%

Sociology 22%

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

New paper w/ Brian McGarry, Ashvin Gandhi, and Drew Wilcock in @jamainternalmed.com!

Hospitals are complaining across the US that patients are "stuck" waiting for rehab beds at nursing homes when they are medically stable and ready for discharge. What is going on??

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Question Has hospital length of stay increased more for Medicare
Advantage beneficiaries than for traditional Medicare beneficiaries
since the COVID-19 pandemic?Findings In this cohort study involving more than 89 million
hospitalizations from 2017 to the third quarter of 2023, Medicare
Advantage beneficiaries experienced disproportionately greater
increases in extended hospital stays, especially among those
discharged to skilled nursing facilities.Meaning These findings suggest that the Medicare Advantage
plan design and practices may contribute to hospital discharge
delays, with implications for patient outcomes and hospital
capacity as enrollment continues to rise.

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Internet Archive @archive.org · 2d

🐹 Before viral videos on TikTok or YouTube, there was Hampsterdance.

Full of dancing hamster GIFs & a sped-up tune, it became one of the internet’s first viral hits.

You can still dance to it on the #WaybackMachine ➡️ web.archive.org/web/19991222...

#Wayback1T

🧵

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · 2d

sounds like a repeat experiment is coming soon? i need you here for moral support though

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Science Magazine @science.org · 2d

This year’s #NobelPrize in Physics honors researchers who demonstrated quantum mechanical effects in electric circuits on a chip. https://scim.ag/46T4qQK

Physics Nobel awarded for macro demonstration of quantum effects

John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis honored for work demonstrating quantum mechanical tunneling in electrical circuits

scim.ag

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · 3d

well, beggars can't be choosers these days. X is not any better 😭

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 3d

Rite Aid closes all remaining stores after 63 years in business

"All Rite Aid stores have now closed. We thank our loyal customers for their many years of support." Rite Aid, once one of America's biggest pharmacy chains, shuttered its remaining 89 stores this wee...

abc7.com

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 3d

Today's Nobel Prize in Medicine went to the discoverers of regulatory T-cells. How could this discovery about our immune systems change the world?

Here is one possible way: leading to treatments for terrible neurological diseases. (1/3)

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 6d

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts www.popsci.com/environment/...

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

www.popsci.com

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Dr. Rishi Wadhera, MD MPP MPhil @rkwadhera.bsky.social · 10d

Medicaid work requirements will soon be implemented nationwide

Our new @bmj.com study shows what happened to insurance coverage and jobs when Georgia rolled them out in 2023. bit.ly/3VE1QsK

Featured in @nytimes.com #medsky
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/w...

Medicaid Work Requirements Don’t Boost Employment, Study Shows

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Rita Rubin

JAMA @jama.com · 15d

Clinicians can enhance patient understanding by using numerical data instead of verbal probabilities, consistent denominators, absolute risk comparisons, and clear context for unfamiliar data types.

ja.ma/4pAC3zi

JAMA Insights: How to Communicate Medical Numbers. It outlines recommendations for conveying risk, adjusting numerators, communicating probability changes, using visualizations, and providing context, with examples of problematic and preferred communication styles.

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

Jose Figueroa, MD, MPH @joefigs.bsky.social · 20d

Federal funding reportedly sent to Harvard for about 200 grants totaling $46 million.

Some welcome relief hopefully to so many.

Story below:

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Harvard Receives $46 Million in Federal Grants, Ending 4-Month Freeze | News | The Harvard Crimson

Millions of dollars in federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health began to flow to Harvard on Friday, the first grant money to return to the University since a judge struck down th...

www.thecrimson.com

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

J. L. Westover @mrlovenstein.bsky.social · 24d

Secret Panel HERE 🐢 tapas.io/episode/2491229

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · 26d

thanks john!

Reposted by Michael Barnett, Dorothy Bishop, Ben Bond‐Lamberty , and 10 more Michael Barnett, Dorothy Bishop, Ben Bond‐Lamberty, Simon Roux, Pierre Bataille, Trevor A. Branch, Ewan Carr, Barrett, Brian Weatherson, Wolfgang Huber, Anton Grau Larsen, Juan Ramón, Baptiste Coulmont

Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · 29d

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

ggplot2 4.0.0

A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

www.tidyverse.org

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Julie L. Lockwood

Peter N. Dudley @conservation.bio · 29d

New 🐟 just dropped.

🧪🌎

www.mbari.org/news/mbaris-...

MBARI's advanced underwater technology reveals a new species of deep-sea snailfish • MBARI

The bumpy snailfish is one of three new species of deep-sea snailfish described by MBARI collaborators at SUNY Geneseo.

www.mbari.org

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

lck303.bsky.social @lck303.bsky.social · Sep 9

I worked as a rehab nurse liaison for years, and anecdotally, can confirm what your research revealed. Another interesting avenue, look at comparing Medicare Advantage-covered IP days across the different insurance providers. I would presume a noticeable difference would present between the carriers

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 9

thanks Rachel!

Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

Thanks to my co-authors, the National Institute on Aging for funding and more on the topic to come.

Please read or send me a message for the article if you can't access!

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Extended Hospital Stays in Medicare Advantage and Traditional Medicare

This cohort study compares the length of stay between patients covered by traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

jamanetwork.com

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

Medicare Advantage plans could be gumming up the entire pipeline from ED visit to hospital discharge through this process. We are already seeing the prolonged ED stays are much more common, which could result from hospital beds being locked up.

www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....

Hospital ‘Boarding’ Of Patients In The Emergency Department Increasingly Common, 2017–24 | Health Affairs Journal

When hospital beds are scarce, patients “board” in the emergency department until an inpatient bed becomes available. Using national data on 46.2 million hospitalizations, 2017–24, we documented rising burdens of hospital boarding in the US. At the peak in January 2022, 40.1 percent of patients boarded for more than four hours, and 6.3 percent boarded for more than twenty-four hours.

www.healthaffairs.org

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

We think this reflects the incentives in Medicare Advantage to have very tight networks of nursing homes that they cover and requiring prior authorization. This has been the subject of congressional reports and intense scrutiny.

www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/pre...

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Releases Majority Staff Report Exposing Medicare Advantage Insurers' Refusal of Care for Vulnerable Seniors | U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connect...

[WASHINGTON, DC] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), released a...

www.blumenthal.senate.gov

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Reposted by John A. Graves

Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

Overall, we estimate that longer hospital stays for Medicare Advantage patients are contributing to close to 2 million extra hospital bed days occupied by people who don't need to be there any more annually. This is a huge waste and bad for patient care.

Why is this happening?

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

When you break things down, the one group with higher lengths of stay are patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans - in particular, those going to a nursing home for rehab.

The likelihood that these patients stay in the hospital for ≥14 days increased by ~30% from 2018 to 2023.

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Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · Sep 8

We studied Medicare hospital claims from 2017 to 2023 and found something striking.

The likelihood that any hospital stay in Medicare was longer than 14, 21 or 28 days (a VERY long time for a hospital stay)has gone up substantially since the pandemic and stayed high. There's a pattern, though ...

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Reposted by Michael Barnett

NPR @npr.org · Sep 8

Known for his intellectual and illuminating touch on the podium, the refined conductor was also surprisingly outspoken when it came to politics and his peers.

Christoph Von Dohnányi, longtime conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, has died

Known for his intellectual and illuminating touch on the podium, the refined conductor was also surprisingly outspoken when it came to politics and his peers.

n.pr

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Simon Roux, Jason Williams

Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · Sep 7

Co-discoverer of reverse transcriptase at 32, Nobel Prize at 37, played a key role at the 1975 Asilomar comference.

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Ellen Meara, Sara R. Collins

Adrianna McIntyre @adrianna.bsky.social · Sep 4

Ben Sommers and I have a new piece up at @jamahealthforum.com on how to think about generalizing lessons from unwinding to looming new Medicaid red tape requirements.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

We appreciate support from the @commonwealthfund.org for this work!

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Jonathan A. Eisen, Hilary M. Babcock , and 2 more Michael Barnett, Jonathan A. Eisen, Hilary M. Babcock, Sarah E. Gollust, Southern Africa

APHA @apha.org · Sep 3

New statement: IDSA, APHA and partners call for RFK Jr. to resign: "Our country needs leadership that will promote open, honest dialogue — not disregard decades of lifesaving science, spread misinformation, reverse medical progress and decimate programs that keep us safe." bit.ly/3JOgDya

JOINT STATEMENT CALLING FOR SECRETARY KENNEDY RESIGNATION Infectious Diseases Society of America 

American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology

American Academy of HIV Medicine 

American Association of Immunologists

American Public Health Association

American Society for Microbiology

American Society for Virology

Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) 

AVAC  

Camenzind Solutions LLC 

Fast-Track Cities Institute 

ID Care

International Association of Providers of AIDS Care 

NTM Info & Research 

Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society  

Peggy Lillis Foundation

Seattle Children’s Research Institute

Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America

Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP)

Stop TB USA 

Treatment Action Group

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Reposted by Michael Barnett, Jesse H. Kroll, Hilary M. Babcock , and 3 more Michael Barnett, Jesse H. Kroll, Hilary M. Babcock, Philip N. Cohen, Lesley A. Hall, Smith

IDSA @idsainfo.bsky.social · Sep 3

As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people.

Our statement: https://bit.ly/45LeJHi

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Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Michael Barnett, David R. Miller , and 1 more Lisa W. Fazio, Michael Barnett, David R. Miller, Greg Linden

The Associated Press @apnews.com · Sep 3

BREAKING: A federal judge reverses the Trump administration's cut of billions of dollars to Harvard University.

Judge reverses Trump administration's cuts of billions of dollars to Harvard University

A federal judge in Boston has ordered the reversal of the Trump administration’s cuts to more than $2.6 billion in funding research grants for Harvard University. U.S.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Lisa W. Fazio, Michael Barnett , and 7 more Kim L. Scheppele, Lisa W. Fazio, Michael Barnett, Daniel Kim, Jesse H. Kroll, John R. Hutchinson, Michael H. Fox, Dawn J. Wright, Robert C. Richards, Timothy D. McBride

Dr. David Miller 🏳️‍🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · Sep 1

🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget!

House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion.

To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle.

YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!

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