Non-interoperable directives: End-of-life wishes and EHRs don’t yet mesh
Joseph Conn in Modern Healthcare
“No surprise that EMRs are doing a poor of handling end-of-life directives. Some of the issues stem from the larger interoperability limitations that plague health IT. Other issues are due to the fact that EHRs simply weren’t designed to handle this issue. As a result, a number of mobile and cloud-based vendors are springing up to address the shortfalls around this particular issue. They are not alone and a host of other niche vendors are springing up to address the particular shortfalls of current EMRs around specific care management and care coordination processes.” – Matt
Integrated delivery networks: Is the whole less than sum of the parts?
Jeff Goldsmith and Lawton R. Burns in Modern Healthcare
“Interesting summary of a new report looking at the “real” impact of vertically integrated networks (i.e. integrated delivery networks or IDN’s). The data is sobering, but not that surprising. Boldly marketed outcomes data aside, the efficiency, costs, effectiveness, and other operational data coming out of the healthcare sector are very poorly understood. In part this is because such data are unavailable, opaque even when reported, and not under the auspices of any one public entity. Bothersome to think about all of the money being put into transforming our healthcare system if the ideal model is actually based on erroneous assumption (or misunderstood/incomplete data).” – Naveen
Blue Cross vastly expands quality-based payment systems
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey in The Boston Globe
“As we witness a growing number of ACOs failing or struggling to meet requirements for CMS participation, the largest private payer in MA is pushing their providers in this direction. >1M MA residents covered by BCBS MA, the most expensive HIX payer in MA by happenstance, will now be covered under a form of quality contract known as the AQC – or Alternative Quality Contract – which currently only covers 680k HMO members. This new plan will extend this model to add approximately 615k PPO members. Will be quite a fascinating learning experience to watch the differences between PPO and HMO present themselves.” – John 3
Your company’s health insurance costs are going down. But yours are going up.
Sarah Kliff in Vox
“Record slow growth in healthcare costs has not translated to lower or slower growing costs for patients. Employer costs have actually declined in recent years but employees continue to see increases, especially in the cost sharing mechanisms designed to make consumers more frugal – deductibles and co-pays. But consumers see no real benefit for making more cost-conscious decisions. The benefits flow to employers. Looked at from the standpoint of risk, consumers are increasingly being asked to assume risk and self-ration.” – Brian
Go Slow On Reference Pricing: Not Ready For Prime Time
David Frankfort and Sara Rosenbaum in HealthAffairs
“Health Affairs blog posting that goes on to burst a little of the bubble of the impact that disclosing reference pricing will have on health care costs. The post goes on to explain some of the limitations of the highly-touted CalPERS example regarding knee and hip replacement and reference pricing in CA. Reference pricing certainly can be a useful starting place but the types of procedures it can be used for are fairly limited and thus the cost-savings that can be achieved through widespread disclosure are somewhat limited too. Additionally, placing a great deal on it might send the message to patients that price is a valid proxy for quality.” – Matt
Slack, the Office Messaging App That May Finally Sink Email
Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times
“Collaboration using technology has always been hit-and-miss. Email and IM are poor substitutes for a variety of reasons. We use Slack here at CR and this article succinctly describes its virtues. This approach solves the information overload problem of traditional technology approaches to team communication. This application could be boon in care management where ad hoc communications are the rule and shared documents and information need constant tweaking.” – Brian
CFO Priorities in Today’s New Value-Based System of Care (PDF link)
Report from SciSolutions
“Timely survey results from hospitals CFOs based upon their responses from Dec 2014. The survey validates a few widely held perceptions (questionable ROI of EHRs), some long-held beliefs are still widely held (biggest key to growth is offering new service offerings), confirm some of the things that are being voiced in the industry (centralizing and standardizing administration and tighter utilization management) and interesting findings (marketing position based upon quality is much more important than cost and the trend of hospital looking to purchase physician services is clearly on the wane).” – Matt
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