Hepatitis C virus treatment is increasingly being offered in primary care because medications now require less frequent monitoring and have fewer adverse effects. However, many primary care clinicians still defer treatment to specialists due to administrative burdens, including laboratory workup, insurance prior authorizations, and pharmacy coordination, which can delay care.

Primary care clinicians spend a growing amount of time responding to patient messages through electronic portals,  a task that contributes to burnout. Some health systems are piloting using large language models (LLMs) to generate draft responses to patient messages.

In Ontario, primary care home visits, which help older adults who are homebound or have difficulty getting to a clinic, increased during the 2010s but declined after a 2019 policy change reduced payment incentives and the COVID-19 pandemic began. This study examined how primary care home visits for adults aged 65 years and older changed from 2014 to 2024.

Salt is usually something people are warned to limit in food, not drinking water. But a global analysis suggests sodium in tap water may be an overlooked contributor to high blood pressure, particularly in coastal regions. 

The study, published in BMJ Global Health, found that higher salinity in drinking water was associated with higher blood pressure and an increased risk of hypertension.