You Need To Read This If Your Practice Is In Illinois
A few weeks ago, I went to a luncheon at our local hospital to learn about the IL Managed Care rollout. I left the luncheon with one thought, this is going to be messy. Perhaps worst of all, the expectations is for doctor offices to clean up the State’s unorganized, information lacking, poorly executed rollout. The transition to […] (Source: Pediatric Inc)
Source: Pediatric Inc - October 5, 2014 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Brandon Tags: Healthcare Pediatrics Policies Reform ACO Care Coordination CCE Credentialing Health insurance IL Illinois Insurance Plans Manage Care Medicaid medical home Patients Source Type: blogs
The Payment Reform Landscape: Value-Oriented Payment Jumps, And Yet …
Today, Catalyst for Payment Reform (CPR) unveiled some potentially exciting news: Our 2014 National Scorecard on Payment Reform tells us 40 percent of commercial sector payments to doctors and hospitals now flow through value-oriented payment methods, defined as payment methods designed to improve quality and reduce waste. This is a dramatic increase since 2013 when the figure was just 11 percent.
Traditional fee-for-service, where we pay for every test and procedure regardless of its value, may rapidly be becoming a relic. While the Scorecard findings are not wholly representative of health plans across the United St...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 30, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Suzanne Delbanco Tags: All Categories Employer-Sponsored Insurance Health Care Costs Health Reform Hospitals Innovation Payment Physicians Policy Quality Source Type: blogs
Early Observations Show Safety-Net ACOs Hold Promise To Achieve The Triple Aim And Promote Health Equity
Safety-net accountable care organizations (ACOs) have the potential to deliver cost-effective, patient-centered care that engages patients and contributes to achieving the Triple Aim in Medicaid. Safety-net ACOs are playing increasingly important roles in delivering care for vulnerable populations. Active ACO formation is occurring in at least 18 state Medicaid programs with considerable variability across states, although they have been slower to develop than ACOs serving Medicare or commercial populations.
This post will outline five key observations regarding emerging safety-net ACOs and suggest broad policy implication...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 15, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: James Maxwell, Michael Bailit, Rachel Tobey, and Christine Barron Tags: All Categories Health Reform Payment States Source Type: blogs
The medical home checkup: Impressing the regulators in 40 minutes
The state stopped by to see us the other day.
Wow, that sounds ominous.
No, really, I mean it felt like the entire Empire State: multiple people from multiple offices of New York state government, department of health, office of compliance this, oversight that, all with a vested interest in how things have been going (i.e., how we have been spending their money) in our patient-centered medical home resident pilot program.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 12, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Fred N. Pelzman, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Improving Access To High Quality Hospice Care: What Is The Optimal Path?
TweetEditor’s note: This post is part of a periodic Health Affairs Blog series on palliative care, health policy, and health reform. The series features essays adapted from and drawing on an upcoming volume, Meeting the Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Health Care Reform, in which clinicians, researchers and policy leaders address 16 key areas where real-world policy options to improve access to quality palliative care could have a substantial role in improving value.
High quality hospice care is consistent with the country’s stated health care reform goals: hosp...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 9, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Melissa Aldridge and Jean Kutner Tags: Access All Categories Health Reform Palliative Care Policy Source Type: blogs
Improving Access To High Quality Hospice Care: What Is The Optimal Path?
Editor’s note: This post is part of a periodic Health Affairs Blog series on palliative care, health policy, and health reform. The series features essays adapted from and drawing on an upcoming volume, Meeting the Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Health Care Reform, in which clinicians, researchers and policy leaders address 16 key areas where real-world policy options to improve access to quality palliative care could have a substantial role in improving value.
High quality hospice care is consistent with the country’s stated health care reform goals: hospice i...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 9, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Melissa Aldridge and Jean Kutner Tags: Access All Categories Health Reform Palliative Care Policy Source Type: blogs
Actionable items: Reduce the work for physicians
Actionable items.
Today I decided to take a look at one of the dashboards that the information technology (IT) department built for our electronic health record, to help us a look at our patients enrolled in the multiple registries of diseases and conditions we are following for the patient-centered medical home.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 7, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Fred N. Pelzman, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Advancing Innovation To Eliminate Health Disparities
TweetThe advent of population health management, community-based care coordination, and mobile health technologies provide a promising opportunity to address longstanding and persistent health disparities. Separately each adds a new dimension to research and analysis, and to individual and community-level public health prevention and access to quality care. Together, providers, payers and researchers alike can acquire a richer understanding of contextual, environmental, and behavioral factors that contribute to disparate outcomes in health.
Existing innovations in data capture, epidemiologic profiling, clinical translation...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 4, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Joseph West Tags: All Categories Chronic Care Disparities Nonmedical Determinants Research Source Type: blogs
Arkansas Payment Improvement Initiative: The First Year
TweetEditor’s note: This post is part of a periodic Health Affairs Blog series, which will run over the next year, looking at payment and delivery reforms in Arkansas and Oregon. The posts will be based on evaluations of these reforms performed with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The authors of this post are part of the team evaluating the Arkansas model.
Arkansas payers and providers actively participated in the design of both the episodic payment and patient-centered medical home (PCMH) models the state has recently implemented. We’ve written about each of these components of the multi-payer Arkan...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 25, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: William Golden, Joseph W. Thompson, Michael Motley, Mark Fendrick, Christopher Mathis, and Michael Chernew Tags: All Categories Medicaid Payment Reform States Source Type: blogs
Key Success Factors For the Medicare Shared Savings Program
TweetIn January 2012 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) officially launched the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) for the formation of national Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Early participants were charged with bringing the theory of accountable care into practice.
Premier, a national health care improvement alliance of hospitals and health systems, created a population health collaborative in 2010 designed to assist providers with developing and implementing successful ACOs in both the public and private sectors.
Thus far, the Premier collaborative has advised nearly 30 MSSP applicants, a...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 21, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Joe Damore and Wes Champion Tags: All Categories Health Reform Medicaid Medicare Payment Physicians Policy Quality Source Type: blogs
Clever Hospitals Find Another Way to Snag New Patients
Last month, I wrote about a hospital system in Colorado that had discovered a way to cross market its more profitable emergency room services if a patient first came to its urgent care center. Pretty clever! Then recently I came across another health care marketing trick close to home and just as sly. As I sat on a New York subway one sizzler of a day, an ad for an ice cream cone grabbed my attention. Ice cream! Hot day! After a closer read, I realized the ad was not touting ice cream but the Center for Advanced Digestive Care, a part of New York Presbyterian, one of the city’s most prestigious hospitals and well kno...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 19, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Incorporating urgent care into the medical home
During her annual physical exam, one of my patients recently asked me, “Are urgent care centers any good, Dr. P?”
She recounted an incident a few months earlier where she awoke with an acute illness and was sick enough that she felt she needed to receive care — at least some medical attention — more imminently than she could get from waiting to speak to my office in the morning. She said she thought about calling the answering service, but thought they would have told her to go to the emergency department.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 16, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Fred N. Pelzman, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Key Takeaways From The Medicare Trustees’ Report
TweetNote: In addition to Keith Fontenot, Kavita Patel also coauthored this post.
Depending on which article you read, either the Medicare Trustees think the program is coming to an end, or the news is great and we don’t need to do anything.
The reality is that the recent Trustees’ report contains both positive and sobering news: while costs have been flat for the last two years and growth is expected to moderate for some years to come, Medicare’s financing is still not in good shape over the long run. Current law benefits exceed financing to pay for them, and the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be unable to pa...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 14, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Keith Fontenot, and Kavita Patel Tags: All Categories Health Care Costs Health Care Delivery Health Reform Medicare Payment Physicians Spending Source Type: blogs
The suspect quality improvements of the medical home
There is an old gag about an intensely optimistic child whose bright outlook on life is so irrepressible that when he is presented with a room full of manure for Christmas, he screams with delight, convinced that there “must be pony in there someplace.”
I was reminded of that when I read the recent research report and the accompanying editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine about the patient-centered medical home (PCMH).
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 21, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Ira Nash, MD Tags: Policy Primary care Source Type: blogs
The patient-centered medical home isn’t ready-made
It’s a cold and rainy morning, and we’ve traveled to the middle of Central Pennsylvania to see a presentation at a conference about a patient-centered medical home product produced by one of the largest health care systems and insurers of the region.
There are clinicians and administrators from all over the eastern half of the U.S. (plus one from California), and also a large contingent visiting from the U.K., on a whirlwind tour to learn about innovations currently taking place in the U.S. health care system.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputati...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 29, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Fred N. Pelzman, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
