In This Week’s Issue:
1. PIPC Chairman Coelho: Holding Health Systems Accountable for Patient Value, click here to view the full post.
2. National Quality Forum Update on Measure Applications Partnership, click here to view the report to HHS.
3. Video: Dr Patrick Conway Discusses the Move to Value-Based Care, click here to view the video.
4. Four Critical Trends Physicians Must Keep Top of Mind in 2016, click here to view the article.
1. PIPC Chairman Coelho: Holding Health Systems Accountable for Patient Value, click here to view the full post.
2. National Quality Forum Update on Measure Applications Partnership, click here to view the report to HHS.
3. Video: Dr Patrick Conway Discusses the Move to Value-Based Care, click here to view the video.
4. Four Critical Trends Physicians Must Keep Top of Mind in 2016, click here to view the article.
1. PIPC Chairman Coelho: Holding Health Systems Accountable for Patient Value
As PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho wrote last week in the Huffington Post, “As an epilepsy patient… I'm grateful to be able to work with my provider to determine which treatment option is best for me, assuming we both have all the available relevant information to help me make my decision. In policy terms, I refer to this simple, yet important concept as ‘value to the patient.’ That's why I've spent my career—from authoring the Americans with Disabilities Act to shaping the development of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)—making sure that patients have a seat at the table when decisions are made about what treatment options should be available to them.
“Unfortunately, I am continually disappointed when I come across proposals from the halls of academia that seek to impose an ‘algorithm’ for value of health care that seeks to mechanically determine what tests and treatments are worth giving to patients and which are not. Indeed, I was surprised--to say the least--to recently be quoted by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel in a Huffington Post blog that promoted the use of ‘quality-adjusted life years’ (QALYs) as a legitimate measure of value in health care decision-making.”
“…As a lifelong advocate for patients and people with disabilities, I will continue to fight to advance the rights of patients to have informed discussions with their doctors about their options, and to decide on the course of treatment that works best for them. Congress spoke to the centrality of patient-centeredness when it established PCORI to advance a new model of research that centers on the needs of patients and respects patient differences. We should be building upon this foundation and extending it more broadly into health care delivery and decision-making. Otherwise, someday, 74-year-old Americans may be less concerned with their treatment and more worried that they'll be told by a bureaucrat that they're all out of QALYs.” Click here to view the full post.
2. National Quality Forum Update on Measure Applications Partnership
The National Quality Forum (NQF) brings together diverse organizations and individuals from across the country dedicated to improving health and healthcare through quality measurement. More than 430 organizations are Members of NQF, including hospitals, physicians and other clinicians, healthcare systems, patient and consumer groups, insurers, employers, and biopharmaceutical and life sciences companies. Additional information about NQF is here and a list of current NQF projects is here. To learn more about healthcare quality measures and their role in helping to achieve better health and healthcare, click here to view an NQF video. Patients are encouraged and welcomed to join, which is so important as we work to ensure quality is measured based on outcomes that matter to patients!
Recently, the NQF Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) announced that it submitted its recommendations on 141 measures under consideration by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for use in 16 federal healthcare programs. MAP is a multi-stakeholder partnership that provides guidance to HHS on performance measures. Federal public reporting programs and nationwide pay-for-performance programs depend on these measures, which impact the over 50 million Americans enrolled in Medicare, as well as their providers.
Specifically, MAP notes that this year’s measures under deliberation revealed a number of important themes, such as identifying measure gaps for mental and behavioral health, pediatric health, and perinatal care, among others. MAP also highlighted efforts to align measures and reduce duplicative measurement; determine ways in which care coordination can improve the patient experience as well as health and healthcare quality; and disseminate information about the use of measures in order to distinguish trends in performance. MAP indicates that “[a]pproximately 60 of the measures are proposed for use in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program legislated by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).” MAP’s final report to HHS is available here.
On Feb. 12, MAP plans to publish further briefs on the topics and measurement issues in for post-acute and long-term care settings and hospital settings. MAP intends to release reports on “themes for clinician settings and cross-cutting issues” on March 15.
3. Video: Dr Patrick Conway Discusses the Move to Value-Based Care
In a video posted by The American Journal of Managed Care, Dr. Patrick Conway, deputy administrator for innovation and quality and chief medical officer at CMS, said that while the pace of payment reform is moving quickly, he thinks about how to maintain that pace.” Click here to view the video.
4. Forbes Four Critical Trends Physicians Must Keep Top of Mind in 2016
An articles published last week in Forbes notes that while many of the developments that occurred in 2015 will continue to affect the U.S. healthcare system in 2016, there are four distinct areas we believe the physician community, policy makers, media and other healthcare influencers must closely monitor in the upcoming year. "There is an increasing emphasis on practicing evidence-based medicine today; however this same rigorous approach is not applied to most policies regulating the practice of medicine… ‘In 2016, it will be critical for policy makers to formulate healthcare policies that can clearly answer these two questions: How does this policy help doctors help patients? How is this regulation helping patients get healthier? These are commonsensical questions that should be at the heart of any rule or policy designed to regulate the practice of medicine.” Click here to view the article.
As PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho wrote last week in the Huffington Post, “As an epilepsy patient… I'm grateful to be able to work with my provider to determine which treatment option is best for me, assuming we both have all the available relevant information to help me make my decision. In policy terms, I refer to this simple, yet important concept as ‘value to the patient.’ That's why I've spent my career—from authoring the Americans with Disabilities Act to shaping the development of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)—making sure that patients have a seat at the table when decisions are made about what treatment options should be available to them.
“Unfortunately, I am continually disappointed when I come across proposals from the halls of academia that seek to impose an ‘algorithm’ for value of health care that seeks to mechanically determine what tests and treatments are worth giving to patients and which are not. Indeed, I was surprised--to say the least--to recently be quoted by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel in a Huffington Post blog that promoted the use of ‘quality-adjusted life years’ (QALYs) as a legitimate measure of value in health care decision-making.”
“…As a lifelong advocate for patients and people with disabilities, I will continue to fight to advance the rights of patients to have informed discussions with their doctors about their options, and to decide on the course of treatment that works best for them. Congress spoke to the centrality of patient-centeredness when it established PCORI to advance a new model of research that centers on the needs of patients and respects patient differences. We should be building upon this foundation and extending it more broadly into health care delivery and decision-making. Otherwise, someday, 74-year-old Americans may be less concerned with their treatment and more worried that they'll be told by a bureaucrat that they're all out of QALYs.” Click here to view the full post.
2. National Quality Forum Update on Measure Applications Partnership
The National Quality Forum (NQF) brings together diverse organizations and individuals from across the country dedicated to improving health and healthcare through quality measurement. More than 430 organizations are Members of NQF, including hospitals, physicians and other clinicians, healthcare systems, patient and consumer groups, insurers, employers, and biopharmaceutical and life sciences companies. Additional information about NQF is here and a list of current NQF projects is here. To learn more about healthcare quality measures and their role in helping to achieve better health and healthcare, click here to view an NQF video. Patients are encouraged and welcomed to join, which is so important as we work to ensure quality is measured based on outcomes that matter to patients!
Recently, the NQF Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) announced that it submitted its recommendations on 141 measures under consideration by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for use in 16 federal healthcare programs. MAP is a multi-stakeholder partnership that provides guidance to HHS on performance measures. Federal public reporting programs and nationwide pay-for-performance programs depend on these measures, which impact the over 50 million Americans enrolled in Medicare, as well as their providers.
Specifically, MAP notes that this year’s measures under deliberation revealed a number of important themes, such as identifying measure gaps for mental and behavioral health, pediatric health, and perinatal care, among others. MAP also highlighted efforts to align measures and reduce duplicative measurement; determine ways in which care coordination can improve the patient experience as well as health and healthcare quality; and disseminate information about the use of measures in order to distinguish trends in performance. MAP indicates that “[a]pproximately 60 of the measures are proposed for use in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program legislated by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).” MAP’s final report to HHS is available here.
On Feb. 12, MAP plans to publish further briefs on the topics and measurement issues in for post-acute and long-term care settings and hospital settings. MAP intends to release reports on “themes for clinician settings and cross-cutting issues” on March 15.
3. Video: Dr Patrick Conway Discusses the Move to Value-Based Care
In a video posted by The American Journal of Managed Care, Dr. Patrick Conway, deputy administrator for innovation and quality and chief medical officer at CMS, said that while the pace of payment reform is moving quickly, he thinks about how to maintain that pace.” Click here to view the video.
4. Forbes Four Critical Trends Physicians Must Keep Top of Mind in 2016
An articles published last week in Forbes notes that while many of the developments that occurred in 2015 will continue to affect the U.S. healthcare system in 2016, there are four distinct areas we believe the physician community, policy makers, media and other healthcare influencers must closely monitor in the upcoming year. "There is an increasing emphasis on practicing evidence-based medicine today; however this same rigorous approach is not applied to most policies regulating the practice of medicine… ‘In 2016, it will be critical for policy makers to formulate healthcare policies that can clearly answer these two questions: How does this policy help doctors help patients? How is this regulation helping patients get healthier? These are commonsensical questions that should be at the heart of any rule or policy designed to regulate the practice of medicine.” Click here to view the article.