In This Week’s Issue:
1. PIPC and Families USA Roundtable: Summary and Recommendations, click here to view the summary.
2. PCORI Funds Medstar Project including Disabilities Partners, click here to view
3. PCORI: Large Pragmatic Studies Funding Announcement Adds More Priority Topics, click here to view the blog and here to view the funding announcement.
4. The Health Care Blog: How Effective is CER? Click here to view the full post.
5. How PCORI Supports Community Health Centers, click here to view the blog.
6. KHN: More Employers Limit Health Plan Networks But Seek To Preserve Quality, Says Adviser, click here to view the post.
7. Health Affairs: Five Engagements That Will Define The Future Of Health, click here to view the full post.
8. Modern Healthcare: High Deductibles Force Doctors to Discuss Costs, click here to view the article (subscription required).
9. Health Affairs Blog: The "Failure" Of Bundled Payment: The Importance Of Consumer Incentives, click here to view the post.
10. AJMA: ASCO President Peter P. Yu on Attending AJMC's Patient-Centered Oncology Care Meeting (Video), click here to view the video.
11. AHA News: CMS Seeks Comments on Potential Patient Engagement Initiatives, click here to view the announcement and here to comment.
12. The Center for Michigan: Bridge: Common Sense Health Care Reforms Can Save Billions, click here to view the post.
13. Science News: Evidence-Based Medicine Actually Isn't, click here for the full post.
1. PIPC and Families USA Roundtable: Summary and Recommendations, click here to view the summary.
2. PCORI Funds Medstar Project including Disabilities Partners, click here to view
3. PCORI: Large Pragmatic Studies Funding Announcement Adds More Priority Topics, click here to view the blog and here to view the funding announcement.
4. The Health Care Blog: How Effective is CER? Click here to view the full post.
5. How PCORI Supports Community Health Centers, click here to view the blog.
6. KHN: More Employers Limit Health Plan Networks But Seek To Preserve Quality, Says Adviser, click here to view the post.
7. Health Affairs: Five Engagements That Will Define The Future Of Health, click here to view the full post.
8. Modern Healthcare: High Deductibles Force Doctors to Discuss Costs, click here to view the article (subscription required).
9. Health Affairs Blog: The "Failure" Of Bundled Payment: The Importance Of Consumer Incentives, click here to view the post.
10. AJMA: ASCO President Peter P. Yu on Attending AJMC's Patient-Centered Oncology Care Meeting (Video), click here to view the video.
11. AHA News: CMS Seeks Comments on Potential Patient Engagement Initiatives, click here to view the announcement and here to comment.
12. The Center for Michigan: Bridge: Common Sense Health Care Reforms Can Save Billions, click here to view the post.
13. Science News: Evidence-Based Medicine Actually Isn't, click here for the full post.
1. PIPC and Families USA Roundtable: Summary and Recommendations
On June 19, 2014, the Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) and Families USA co-hosted a roundtable discussion on “Accountability for Patient Engagement in Research and Dissemination.” The purpose was to move beyond a discussion of the points of engagement, and focus on who is accountable for patient engagement, and what makes engagement meaningful. It was noted, and agreed by participants, that a goal of patient engagement is real patient empowerment and activation in their health care. A focus of the discussion was implementation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which is creating a precedent for patient engagement practices in research that could be modeled by other entities.
Participants in the roundtable discussion included representatives of PCORI Advisory Panels, members of PIPC, and non-profit organizations representing patients. During introductions, participants described their varied personal experiences with the health care system and with patient and community engagement in research and dissemination. Participants had expertise working with PCORI, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - some as analysts, others as patient representatives, and others as researchers. Click here to view the summary and recommendations.
2. PCORI Funds Medstar Project including Disabilities Partners
PIPC was pleased to help connect patient partners with Medstar Health Research Institute, a result of our ongoing work from our roundtable with organizations representing people with disabilities. As a result of that collaboration including AAPD, United Spinal, and others, Medstar was awarded a funding for a study entitled "The Impact of Self-Management with Probiotics on Urinary Symptoms and the Urine Microbiome in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury and Spina Bifida.” Click here to view the grant summary.
3. PCORI: Large Pragmatic Studies Funding Announcement Adds More Priority Topics
In a recent post for The PCORI Blog, Stanley Ip and David Hickam of PCORI’s Clinical Effectiveness Research Program take a further look at the agency’s latest funding announcement. “Looking to fund real-world, large-scale trials designed to address critical questions faced by patients, caregivers, clinicians, and delivery systems. We want these studies to provide information that can be directly adopted by healthcare providers. We are now releasing our third PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA) for such large pragmatic studies… The studies must focus on diverse, representative patient populations and take place within typical clinical care and community settings. The research must compare the effectiveness of two or more alternatives for improving patient-centered outcomes and be large enough to detect small but important differences between alternatives, as well as detect these differences in important patient subgroups. Click here to view the blog, and here to view the funding announcement.
4. The Health Care Blog: How Effective is CER?
Late last week, Robert Dubois of The Health Care Blog wrote a piece about comparative effectiveness research. “Research published recently in the American Journal of Managed Care suggests that changes are needed in order to see more consistent translation of research findings into clinical practice. In short, at the moment, we have a hard time using what we learn from CER... This lag in translating research findings into practice is reflected in the expectations among health care stakeholders for CER. Although a recent survey shows continued optimism for the use of CER as a tool for improving health care decision-making, most stakeholders are expecting the impact to occur in the near future.” Click here to view the full post.
5. How PCORI Supports Community Health Centers
PCORI’s Lynn D. Disney, Sarah Greene, and Kara Odom Walker, collaborated for a recent PCORI Blog about research conducted through community health centers. “The second week in August is National Health Center Week, dedicated to raising public awareness of community health centers and their mission to deliver affordable, accessible, high-quality care to underserved populations.[...] We'd like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the research that PCORI funds to improve care for vulnerable patients in community settings and provide a structure and support for them to become key partners in the broader research enterprise.” Click here to view the post.
6. Kaiser Health News: More Employers Limit Health Plan Networks But Seek To Preserve Quality, Says Adviser
Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News reported recently about how the employer mandate could affect patients. “[Dr. Robert Galvin:] The very large companies – the GEs, the Verizons, the IBMs, Neiman Marcus, Michael's-- they have some turnover but have largely stable populations and labor markets where health benefits are competitive. Those folks are doubling down on their efforts to manage their employee benefit costs. And that's where you see a lot of creative benefits, value-based insurance design, some of these on-site medical clinics.” Click here to view the post.
7. Health Affairs: Five Engagements That Will Define The Future Of Health
Late last month, Health Affairs editor Alan Weil published an article synthesizing his keynote address given to the Colorado Health Symposium. “The future of health will be defined by the health care system’s ability to engage the whole patient. One element of engaging with the whole patient is breaking down barriers across physical, mental, and oral health; another is understanding that social context is critical to how patients interact with the health care system and how medical treatment affects patients, and that social factors have a tremendous effect on people’s health.” Click here to view the full post.
8. Modern Healthcare: High Deductibles Force Doctors to Discuss Costs
According to a recent article in Modern Healthcare, “Doctors accustomed to fielding patient questions about the benefits of procedures, drugs and tests say patients increasingly are demanding answers to some very different questions: How much will it cost, do I really need it and can it wait? Those questions arise more frequently as patients bear financial responsibility for more of their medical bills.” Click here to view the article (subscription required).
9. Health Affairs Blog: The "Failure" Of Bundled Payment: The Importance Of Consumer Incentives
James Caillouette and James C. Robinson of the Health Affairs Blog teamed up for a post regarding bundled payments. “The essential ingredient for bundled payment is a change in consumer cost-sharing requirements so that patients selecting high-quality, more-efficient providers, who can and will participate in bundled payment, pay less out of pocket than consumers choosing less effective providers who do not make the needed investments. This imperative is consistent with the broader principles of value-based insurance design.” Click here to view the post.
10. AJMA: ASCO President Peter P. Yu on Attending AJMC's Patient-Centered Oncology Care Meeting (Video)
Last week The American Journal of Managed Care hosted Peter Paul Yu, MD, FASCO, who this summer became president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “[Dr. Yu] shared how the group is leading the discussion of what constitutes value in cancer care, as well as the need to engage all stakeholders in this critical topic.” Click here to view the video.
11. AHA News: CMS Seeks Comments on Potential Patient Engagement Initiatives
AHA News announced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) recent request for information about payment models for public insurance programs. “[CMS] is accepting comments through Sept. 15 on potential initiatives to test innovative models to engage Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program beneficiaries more actively in their health and health care. The agency is especially interested in models that use evidence-based social and behavioral insights and methods from behavioral economics, social psychology and incentive design to encourage enrollment in the models and motivate continued engagement.” Click here to view the announcement and here to comment.
12. The Center for Michigan: Bridge: Common Sense Health Care Reforms Can Save Billions
As a guest commentator, David Hutton penned a piece for The Center for Michigan: Bridge regarding the legislative future for VBID, “The University of Michigan's Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) has developed creative solutions like changing insurance co-pays to encourage high-value care and discourage wasteful spending. [...] These ideas have bipartisan support and have been championed by Michigan leaders including Senator Debbie Stabenow, Congressman John Dingell and Governor Rick Snyder. Michigan is already leading in health care innovation with programs like Healthy Michigan.” Click here to view the post.
13. Science News: Evidence-Based Medicine Actually Isn't
Writing for the blog Science News, Tom Siegfried commented last week about EBM and personalized medicine. “[Trisha Greenhalgh] and colleagues aren't arguing against the need for evidence. Rather they are saying the evidence needs to be better, better explained, and more useful to practicing physicians. For one thing, evidence-based medicine should focus more on individual patients, taking their personal differences and needs into account. Evidence-based guidelines should allow for expert judgment to be applied to specific cases, not just blind adherence to algorithmic rules based on statistical averages.” Click here for the full post.
On June 19, 2014, the Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) and Families USA co-hosted a roundtable discussion on “Accountability for Patient Engagement in Research and Dissemination.” The purpose was to move beyond a discussion of the points of engagement, and focus on who is accountable for patient engagement, and what makes engagement meaningful. It was noted, and agreed by participants, that a goal of patient engagement is real patient empowerment and activation in their health care. A focus of the discussion was implementation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which is creating a precedent for patient engagement practices in research that could be modeled by other entities.
Participants in the roundtable discussion included representatives of PCORI Advisory Panels, members of PIPC, and non-profit organizations representing patients. During introductions, participants described their varied personal experiences with the health care system and with patient and community engagement in research and dissemination. Participants had expertise working with PCORI, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - some as analysts, others as patient representatives, and others as researchers. Click here to view the summary and recommendations.
2. PCORI Funds Medstar Project including Disabilities Partners
PIPC was pleased to help connect patient partners with Medstar Health Research Institute, a result of our ongoing work from our roundtable with organizations representing people with disabilities. As a result of that collaboration including AAPD, United Spinal, and others, Medstar was awarded a funding for a study entitled "The Impact of Self-Management with Probiotics on Urinary Symptoms and the Urine Microbiome in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury and Spina Bifida.” Click here to view the grant summary.
3. PCORI: Large Pragmatic Studies Funding Announcement Adds More Priority Topics
In a recent post for The PCORI Blog, Stanley Ip and David Hickam of PCORI’s Clinical Effectiveness Research Program take a further look at the agency’s latest funding announcement. “Looking to fund real-world, large-scale trials designed to address critical questions faced by patients, caregivers, clinicians, and delivery systems. We want these studies to provide information that can be directly adopted by healthcare providers. We are now releasing our third PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA) for such large pragmatic studies… The studies must focus on diverse, representative patient populations and take place within typical clinical care and community settings. The research must compare the effectiveness of two or more alternatives for improving patient-centered outcomes and be large enough to detect small but important differences between alternatives, as well as detect these differences in important patient subgroups. Click here to view the blog, and here to view the funding announcement.
4. The Health Care Blog: How Effective is CER?
Late last week, Robert Dubois of The Health Care Blog wrote a piece about comparative effectiveness research. “Research published recently in the American Journal of Managed Care suggests that changes are needed in order to see more consistent translation of research findings into clinical practice. In short, at the moment, we have a hard time using what we learn from CER... This lag in translating research findings into practice is reflected in the expectations among health care stakeholders for CER. Although a recent survey shows continued optimism for the use of CER as a tool for improving health care decision-making, most stakeholders are expecting the impact to occur in the near future.” Click here to view the full post.
5. How PCORI Supports Community Health Centers
PCORI’s Lynn D. Disney, Sarah Greene, and Kara Odom Walker, collaborated for a recent PCORI Blog about research conducted through community health centers. “The second week in August is National Health Center Week, dedicated to raising public awareness of community health centers and their mission to deliver affordable, accessible, high-quality care to underserved populations.[...] We'd like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the research that PCORI funds to improve care for vulnerable patients in community settings and provide a structure and support for them to become key partners in the broader research enterprise.” Click here to view the post.
6. Kaiser Health News: More Employers Limit Health Plan Networks But Seek To Preserve Quality, Says Adviser
Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News reported recently about how the employer mandate could affect patients. “[Dr. Robert Galvin:] The very large companies – the GEs, the Verizons, the IBMs, Neiman Marcus, Michael's-- they have some turnover but have largely stable populations and labor markets where health benefits are competitive. Those folks are doubling down on their efforts to manage their employee benefit costs. And that's where you see a lot of creative benefits, value-based insurance design, some of these on-site medical clinics.” Click here to view the post.
7. Health Affairs: Five Engagements That Will Define The Future Of Health
Late last month, Health Affairs editor Alan Weil published an article synthesizing his keynote address given to the Colorado Health Symposium. “The future of health will be defined by the health care system’s ability to engage the whole patient. One element of engaging with the whole patient is breaking down barriers across physical, mental, and oral health; another is understanding that social context is critical to how patients interact with the health care system and how medical treatment affects patients, and that social factors have a tremendous effect on people’s health.” Click here to view the full post.
8. Modern Healthcare: High Deductibles Force Doctors to Discuss Costs
According to a recent article in Modern Healthcare, “Doctors accustomed to fielding patient questions about the benefits of procedures, drugs and tests say patients increasingly are demanding answers to some very different questions: How much will it cost, do I really need it and can it wait? Those questions arise more frequently as patients bear financial responsibility for more of their medical bills.” Click here to view the article (subscription required).
9. Health Affairs Blog: The "Failure" Of Bundled Payment: The Importance Of Consumer Incentives
James Caillouette and James C. Robinson of the Health Affairs Blog teamed up for a post regarding bundled payments. “The essential ingredient for bundled payment is a change in consumer cost-sharing requirements so that patients selecting high-quality, more-efficient providers, who can and will participate in bundled payment, pay less out of pocket than consumers choosing less effective providers who do not make the needed investments. This imperative is consistent with the broader principles of value-based insurance design.” Click here to view the post.
10. AJMA: ASCO President Peter P. Yu on Attending AJMC's Patient-Centered Oncology Care Meeting (Video)
Last week The American Journal of Managed Care hosted Peter Paul Yu, MD, FASCO, who this summer became president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “[Dr. Yu] shared how the group is leading the discussion of what constitutes value in cancer care, as well as the need to engage all stakeholders in this critical topic.” Click here to view the video.
11. AHA News: CMS Seeks Comments on Potential Patient Engagement Initiatives
AHA News announced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) recent request for information about payment models for public insurance programs. “[CMS] is accepting comments through Sept. 15 on potential initiatives to test innovative models to engage Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program beneficiaries more actively in their health and health care. The agency is especially interested in models that use evidence-based social and behavioral insights and methods from behavioral economics, social psychology and incentive design to encourage enrollment in the models and motivate continued engagement.” Click here to view the announcement and here to comment.
12. The Center for Michigan: Bridge: Common Sense Health Care Reforms Can Save Billions
As a guest commentator, David Hutton penned a piece for The Center for Michigan: Bridge regarding the legislative future for VBID, “The University of Michigan's Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) has developed creative solutions like changing insurance co-pays to encourage high-value care and discourage wasteful spending. [...] These ideas have bipartisan support and have been championed by Michigan leaders including Senator Debbie Stabenow, Congressman John Dingell and Governor Rick Snyder. Michigan is already leading in health care innovation with programs like Healthy Michigan.” Click here to view the post.
13. Science News: Evidence-Based Medicine Actually Isn't
Writing for the blog Science News, Tom Siegfried commented last week about EBM and personalized medicine. “[Trisha Greenhalgh] and colleagues aren't arguing against the need for evidence. Rather they are saying the evidence needs to be better, better explained, and more useful to practicing physicians. For one thing, evidence-based medicine should focus more on individual patients, taking their personal differences and needs into account. Evidence-based guidelines should allow for expert judgment to be applied to specific cases, not just blind adherence to algorithmic rules based on statistical averages.” Click here for the full post.
