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The Obama administration announced plans to overhaul the way doctors are reimbursed, paying for quality of care rather than paying Medicare doctors for every procedure they perform. The government will also evaluate other measures, including whether patients are healthier. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018. "Today, for the first time, we are setting clear goals--and establishing a clear timeline--for moving from volume to value in Medicare payments," HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in a statement Monday. (Washington Post; HHS statement)

 

  

Administration retreats from sharing personal data from HealthCare.gov

The Obama administration has scaled back the release of personal information from HealthCare.gov to private companies with a commercial interest in the data. Last week, the Associated Press reported the website was sending personal data to companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data for performance and marketing, including age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes or is pregnant, and the computer's Internet address. Lawmakers and privacy advocates called on the administration to stop the practice. The  administration had maintained the data sharing was intended to improve customer experience. (Associated Press)


 

OIG report: CGI didn't get proper vetting

An investigation by the Office of the Inspector General found the government didn't fully vet the history of problems of one of the key contractors for HealthCare.gov, CGI Federal, The Wall Street Journal reports. The report "paints a picture of rushed and sloppy activity with poor oversight that didn't meet the agency's standards." Officials from HHS and CMS said they concurred with the recommendations in the report. A CGI spokeswoman didn't comment. (The Wall Street Journal; Kaiser Health News)
  

Innovation & transformation

JAMA paper: Collaboration reduces diagnostic errors 

Teamwork could help reduce the incidence of diagnostic mistakes, according to a small study out of Germany published in a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers recruited 88 fourth-year medical students and presented them with simulated patient cases. They were asked to quickly determine which of a total of 30 diagnostic tests should be ordered. Twenty-eight of the students worked individually; the rest worked in pairs. Those working in pairs took 2:02 minutes longer than individuals, but they were more accurate in selecting a diagnosis (68 percent) compared with those working individually (50 percent). (Modern Healthcare; JAMA)

Survey finds increasing demand for case manager certification
More employers are demanding--and rewarding--certification in case management, according to the Commission for Case Manager Certification's 2014 Role and Function Study, released Tuesday. The study found that 40.2 percent of employers now require certification, a 14.7 percent increase from 2009. In addition, the percentage of employers who offer a monetary reward for certification has also grown by nearly 10 percent since the 2009 study. (The Street)

 

Increased pharmacist involvement could cut costs, improve health

Under the ACA-created Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, Community Care of North Carolina has launched a project that gives pharmacists access to medical information about super-utilizers and reimburses them for the extra work. High-need patients are frequently confused by the number of medications prescribed for them, and the disconnect between physicians and pharmacists continues to exacerbate the issue. Success of the program will, ideally, lead to national implementation. (Kaiser Health News)
 
Consumers & Providers

Diabetes drives health care costs

The rising prevalence of diabetes in the United States is one of the major factors increasing the cost of health care services. Diagnosed cases of diabetes drive the spending of 10 percent of all health care dollars, representing about $245 billion a year in 2012, according to research published in Diabetes Care.(Diabetes Care; FierceHealthcare)
 
 

New York: Experienced NPs no longer require physician oversight

Nurse practitioners in New York with more than 3,600 hours of clinical experience no longer must submit patient charts for review by "collaborative" physicians. "NPs are no longer tethered to a physician who may or may not have anything to do with the patient," Stephen Ferrara, DNP, executive director of the Nurse Practitioner Association, tells MedPage Today. Across the U.S, requirements vary. States that have more permissive regulations attract more NPs; many work in rural and underserved areas. In 2014, there were 192,000 practicing NPs in the U.S.; they saw patients in more than 900 million clinical visits. (MedPage Today)
A coalition of 35 medical societies led by the American Medical Association claims Meaningful Use certification requirements are a major contributing factor to EHR system problems, and is worried about adverse effects on patient safety. The coalition is urging regulators to decouple the certification of EHRs from Meaningful Use, while also requesting that the Office of the National Coordinator reconsider alternative software testing methods and the integration of stakeholder feedback on technical matters related to MU. (The Hill)

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New & Noted   

Telehealth growth continues: An Accenture report finds 19 of 25 states that received funding for State Health Care Innovation Plans aim to boost telehealth investments. All the states in the program are focusing on patient-centered medical homes and lower-cost labor models. Nineteen plan to expand telehealth use; of those, 15 hope to offer more patient-facing digital tools. (MobiHealthNews)

  

Iowa HIX CoOp fails: Iowa plans to shut down insurer CoOportunity Health; this represents the first failure of one of the nonprofit cooperatives created under the Affordable Care Act. (Wall Street Journal)

  
Multi-media

Grassley takes aim at nonprofit hospitals that sue poorest patients

Responding to a report by ProPublica and NPR, Sen. Charles Grassley is calling out nonprofit hospitals who are suing poor patients over unpaid bills and says they could be breaking the law. The report looked at six states and found that nonprofit hospitals in each of them were suing hundreds of their patients. (NPR)

 

MarketVoices...quotes worth reading

   

"Neither differences in knowledge nor in amount and relevance of acquired information explained the superior accuracy of the pairs. Collaboration may have helped correct errors, fill knowledge gaps and counteract reasoning flaws." -- Researchers on finding that working collaboratively in pairs yielded better results than working individually, in JAMA

 

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Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2014





























 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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