Admitted to Your Bedroom: Some Hospitals Try Treating Patients at Home
Daniela J Lamas for The New York Times
“Delivering acute care in a home setting is not all that new but it is still rare. This article talks about how it makes economic and outcome sense for certain kinds of patients and conditions. Two aspects of this article are of interest. The payment system lags. IT is less likely to be as central in home-based acute care as it is in hospitals. Just one more data point pointing to the trend toward more care at lower cost venues.” – Brian
Obama Proposes That Medicare Be Given the Right to Negotiate the Cost of Drugs
Robert Pear for The New York Times
“As the debate over high costs of care evolves, a major issue emerging is the price of new drug treatments for diseases such as cystic fibrosis, hepatitis C, and some cancers. As one insurance executive interviewed for this article put it, “What good is a miracle drug if you can’t afford it?” The government’s ability to negotiate better rates is a staple of other health systems around the world, such as National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE) in the UK. With drug companies setting up offshore headquarters and become increasingly international, the question of whether Medicare should be allowed to negotiate lower prices with them directly becomes more important.” – Naveen
Related: Medicare Releases Detailed Data on Prescription Drug Spending
Administration drafts plan to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Sarah Wheaton and Chase Purdy for Politico
“Lost, at least to me, in the runup to HIMSS was the new plan from the feds on how to combat antibiotic resistance. The need to drive better patient satisfaction will have to be balanced against patient’s expectations about the availability of this class of meds. The days of free and easy, and largely futile, access to antibiotics will soon be over.” – Brian
The Problem with Satisfied Patients
Alexandra Robbins for The Atlantic
“Interesting article on the dark side of the emerging patient satisfaction industry. With “skin in the game” due to the inclusion of HCAHPS scores as part of Medicare incentive programs, hospitals are re-thinking the way they train their nurses, mete out payments, and treat their patients. Consumerization of healthcare may be a good thing, but as this article points out, the mantra of “the patient is always right” is simply not correct and may produce unintended adverse outcomes. More broadly, patient satisfaction scores are not necessarily linked to lower readmissions, lower spending, better outcomes, or other important metrics. With so many vendors clamoring to cash in on HCAHPS-driven hospital budgets, perhaps it’s time to rethink the measurement of patient satisfaction.” – Naveen
The Quality Tower Of Babel
Elizabeth Teisberg and Scott Wallace for Health Affairs
“Quality reporting is officially out of control. This excellent summary of the quality reporting landscape from Health Affairs lists a variety of reasons for more focus on the actual outcome and less on the process of getting to an outcome. It suggests that proliferating quality measure will only perpetuate “eminence-based” medicine at the expense of patient-centered and evidence-based medicine.” – Brian
Sentinel Event Data: General Information 1995-2014 (pdf)
Joint Commission Report
“Two weeks ago the Joint Commission issued a lot of cumulative summary data about sentinel events over the last ten years. While there is no actual article here, these reports make for interesting reading anyway. For example, some states do not report these events to TJC and it also seems that a significant percentage of these events come to its attention because someone other than the HCO dropped a dime.” – Brian
Teladoc plans to file for IPO, sues to stop Texas Medical Board rule
Bill Hethcock for Dallas Business Journal
“Big news from the world of telehealth, as TelaDoc prepares to file their initial public offering. There are a few different things to chew on here. TelaDoc clearly wanted to get out ahead of their main competitors, namely AmericanWell. They will also validate (or fail to validate) Wall Street’s specific appetite for telehealth as part of the broader, positive interest in the healthcare market. In another announcement, TelaDoc is suing the state of Texas’s Medical Board for passing state legislation to limit patient-doctor televisits to pre-existing relationships. Whether or not this is a publicity stunt to drum up excitement in their IPO, it is a signal to the rest of the industry that TelaDoc is unafraid to take a leadership role in pushing the industry forward.” – Naveen
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