In This Week’s Issue:
1. Senator Casey in Ability Magazine: Time to Empower Patients and People with Disabilities, click here to view the article.
2. PIPC Chairman’s Corner: Patient Engagement is Paramount in New CMMI Models, click here to view the blog post.
3. The Huffington Post: Top Ten Medical Research Issues and Trends to Watch in 2017, click here to view the article.
4. Video: Dr Joseph Alvarnas on Importance of Patient Voice in Value-Based Cancer Care, click here to view the video
5. The PCORI Blog: The Importance of the Patient Voice, click here to view the blog post.
6. The PCORI Blog: Data to Drive Individualized Clinical Research, click here to view the blog post.
7. Sign and Share Petition to Give Patients and People Served by Health Systems a Voice in Healthcare, click here to view and sign the petition.
8. Upcoming Events and Webinars, see details below.
9. Medical Journal Articles, see details below.
10. AHRQ Effective Program Updates, see details below.
1. Senator Casey in Ability Magazine: Time to Empower Patients and People with Disabilities, click here to view the article.
2. PIPC Chairman’s Corner: Patient Engagement is Paramount in New CMMI Models, click here to view the blog post.
3. The Huffington Post: Top Ten Medical Research Issues and Trends to Watch in 2017, click here to view the article.
4. Video: Dr Joseph Alvarnas on Importance of Patient Voice in Value-Based Cancer Care, click here to view the video
5. The PCORI Blog: The Importance of the Patient Voice, click here to view the blog post.
6. The PCORI Blog: Data to Drive Individualized Clinical Research, click here to view the blog post.
7. Sign and Share Petition to Give Patients and People Served by Health Systems a Voice in Healthcare, click here to view and sign the petition.
8. Upcoming Events and Webinars, see details below.
9. Medical Journal Articles, see details below.
10. AHRQ Effective Program Updates, see details below.
1. Senator Casey in Ability Magazine: Time to Empower Patients and People with Disabilities
An opinion piece published in Ability Magazine from Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) titled “Time to Empower Patients and People with Disabilities” provides a wonderful example of the impact of our advocacy to better engage patients and people with disabilities in policy-making. “To succeed, these health care reforms should be founded on one principal: improving the life of patients receiving care,” Sen. Casey writes. “As technology opens the door to groundbreaking methods of personalized care, having people with disabilities involved in the health care debate is more important than ever before. The power to personalize care will incentivize people to monitor and take a more active role in maintaining their health.”
Sen. Casey goes on to express concern over using quality measures to apply one-size-fits-all policies, especially for people with disabilities. Sen. Casey writes, “Persons with disabilities may have atypical health care needs and, as a result, require individualized services or treatments. The wide variation of physiological experiences of long-term disability, such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or Down syndrome, means that what is an ‘average’ treatment may not be appropriate for any given individual with a disability. There is long standing and well-founded concern regarding the use of QALYs [quality-adjusted-life years], which use an average view of the optimal quality of life to determine the value of a treatment. Using QALYs to determine the treatment for people with disabilities could reduce health care access because the cost-per-QALY may not be deemed cost-effective. As a result, using QALYs and similar tests to determine who gets what treatment could have a severe impact on the access to health care for countless individuals with disabilities. Click here to view the article.
2. PIPC Chairman’s Corner: Patient Engagement is Paramount in New CMMI Models
As PIPC continues to play an active role in building a patient-centered healthcare system, we’ve been intensely focused on ensuring that the transition to a value-based health system is built on the foundation of achieving outcomes that truly matter to patients. That’s why PIPC was encouraged when the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recently announced two models designed to increase patient engagement in care, as well as increase shared decision-making about care and treatment.
PIPC’s latest Chairman’s Corner blog post applauds the Direct Decision and Shared Decision Making models as employing novel approaches to understanding how Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries make decisions about treatment options. “Through these models, the agency hopes to demonstrate the impact of a more patient-centered decision-making process on overall patient engagement in a health-care system charged with delivering better care, more affordable care, and increased transparency in care quality and cost,” PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho states. “Patient engagement is my ministry and these new CMMI decision-making models will be an important first step in ensuring that patients are given the role they need, want, and deserve when it comes to their individual care decisions. As these new models evolve, please share your experiences with us so we can effectively work with Congress and the new Administration to ensure patient engagement remains an important focus for CMS in the new year and beyond.” Click here to view the blog post.
3. The Huffington Post: Top Ten Medical Research Issues and Trends to Watch in 2017
FasterCures has published a list in The Huffington Post outlining the top ten medical research issues to watch in 2017. Among these include a focus on quantitative and qualitative metrics of the value of patient-centricity and patient engagement, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), the Precision Medicine Initiative, data sharing, the evaluation of value frameworks, and more. In talking about the evolution of value frameworks, the article notes, “This is a trend that must accelerate if it’s to catch up with the debate about health-care costs in this country.” Click here to view the article.
4. Video: Dr Joseph Alvarnas on Importance of Patient Voice in Value-Based Cancer Care
In a video published in the American Journal of Managed Care, Dr. Joseph Alvarnas of the City of Hope and editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology discusses the importance of the patient voice in value-based cancer care. “The transformation to value-based oncology care must be centered upon the priorities and needs of patients and their families,” Dr. Alvarnas said. “This vision is starting to be incorporated in areas like the Oncology Care Model, which looks at patient-reported outcomes and experiences.” Click here to view the video.
5. The PCORI Blog: The Importance of the Patient Voice
Patient Family Advisor Alexis Synder emphasizes the importance of including the patient voice in healthcare in a recent PCORI blog post. Providing anecdotes drawn from her personal life, Alexis shares her experiences in the healthcare system when she noticed that there was a need to include patients and families in the healthcare decision making and recovery process. In doing so, she highlights the importance of PCORI. “The patient voice is so critical,” she writes. “Providers and healthcare systems can best help patients in their times of need when patients, as well as their caregivers, are fully included in decision making. This is where the work being done by PCORI is so critically important. PCORI recognizes that it takes the whole community.” Click here to view the blog post.
6. The PCORI Blog: Data to Drive Individualized Clinical Research
A recent Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) blog post discusses the creation of PCORnet, PCORI’s initiative to harness the power of vast volumes of health data and patient-reported outcomes. “PCORI has long recognized the value of accessing large collections of health data to make clinical research faster, easier, and less costly to conduct,” the blog post shares. “Having data from tens of thousands—or tens of millions—of people can enable research teams to find out more about how different therapies affect individual patients. That knowledge, in turn, will allow patients, their caregivers, and their clinicians to make better-informed healthcare decisions.” Click here to view the blog post.
7. Sign and Share Petition to Give Patients and People Served by Health Systems a Voice in Healthcare
Sign and share PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho’s recently launched petition calling on health care stakeholders to recognize patients and people served by health system’s movement for greater say in their own health care. “We urge both the media and politicians to take heed of what matters to us… because in the end, we are all patients,” Chairman Coelho writes.
Join the petition to all those who define your health care to say…
PIPC encourages every individual to sign and share the petition in order to increase its impact and raise awareness of the important issue. Click here to view and sign the petition.
8. Upcoming Events and Webinars
PCORI Board of Governors Meeting
January 10, 2017, 12:00-1:00PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 12, 2017, 1:00-2:30PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 18, 2017, 10:00-11:30 AM ET
Click here for details.
Getting to Know PCORI: From Application to Closeout (January 2017)
January 23 - 24, 2017, Washington Marriott Georgetown
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 24, 2017, 1:00-2:30 PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Board of Governors Meeting
January 24, 2017, 12:00-1:30 PM ET
Click here for details.
Optimal Treatment Sequences for Nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 25, 2017, 11:00 AM -12:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
Dissemination and Implementation Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 25, 2017, 3:00-4:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
Pragmatic Clinical Studies Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 26, 2017, 2:30-4:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
2017 National Health Policy Conference
January 30 - 31, 2017, Marriott, Marquis, Washington D.C.
Click here for details.
National Value-Based Payment and Pay for Performance Summit
March 8, 2017, San Francisco, CA
Click here for details.
Evidence-Based Guidelines Affecting Policy, Practice and Stakeholders (E-GAPPS III) Conference
March 20-21, 2017, New York, NY
Click here for details.
9. Medical Journal Articles
Improving Outpatient Primary Medication Adherence with Physician Guided, Automated Dispensing, click here to view.
Association Between Adherence to Medications for COPD and Medications for Other Chronic Conditions in COPD Patients, click here to view.
Commentary: Precision Benefit Design—Using "Smarter" Deductibles to Better Engage Consumers and Mitigate Cost-Related Nonadherence, click here to view.
Levers for Addressing Medical Underuse and Overuse: Achieving High-Value Health Care, click here to view.
From Universal Health Coverage to Right Care for Health, click here to view.
AMCP Partnership Forum: Enabling the Exchange of Clinical and Economic Information Pre-FDA Approval, click here to view.
ACOs Serving High Proportions Of Racial And Ethnic Minorities Lag In Quality Performance, click here to view.
Detecting Heterogeneous Treatment Effects to Guide Personalized Blood Pressure Treatment: A Modeling Study of Randomized Clinical Trials, click here to view.
An Evidence-Based Medicine Approach to Antihyperglycemic Therapy in Diabetes Mellitus to Overcome Overtreatment, click here to view.
Perspective: Patient-Reported Outcomes — Harnessing Patients' Voices to Improve Clinical Care, click here to view.
10. AHRQ Effective Program Updates
Prioritization and Selection of Harms for Inclusion in Systematic Reviews, click here to view.
Assessing the Risk of Bias of Individual Studies in Systematic Reviews of Health Care Interventions: An Update, click here to view.
An opinion piece published in Ability Magazine from Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) titled “Time to Empower Patients and People with Disabilities” provides a wonderful example of the impact of our advocacy to better engage patients and people with disabilities in policy-making. “To succeed, these health care reforms should be founded on one principal: improving the life of patients receiving care,” Sen. Casey writes. “As technology opens the door to groundbreaking methods of personalized care, having people with disabilities involved in the health care debate is more important than ever before. The power to personalize care will incentivize people to monitor and take a more active role in maintaining their health.”
Sen. Casey goes on to express concern over using quality measures to apply one-size-fits-all policies, especially for people with disabilities. Sen. Casey writes, “Persons with disabilities may have atypical health care needs and, as a result, require individualized services or treatments. The wide variation of physiological experiences of long-term disability, such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or Down syndrome, means that what is an ‘average’ treatment may not be appropriate for any given individual with a disability. There is long standing and well-founded concern regarding the use of QALYs [quality-adjusted-life years], which use an average view of the optimal quality of life to determine the value of a treatment. Using QALYs to determine the treatment for people with disabilities could reduce health care access because the cost-per-QALY may not be deemed cost-effective. As a result, using QALYs and similar tests to determine who gets what treatment could have a severe impact on the access to health care for countless individuals with disabilities. Click here to view the article.
2. PIPC Chairman’s Corner: Patient Engagement is Paramount in New CMMI Models
As PIPC continues to play an active role in building a patient-centered healthcare system, we’ve been intensely focused on ensuring that the transition to a value-based health system is built on the foundation of achieving outcomes that truly matter to patients. That’s why PIPC was encouraged when the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recently announced two models designed to increase patient engagement in care, as well as increase shared decision-making about care and treatment.
PIPC’s latest Chairman’s Corner blog post applauds the Direct Decision and Shared Decision Making models as employing novel approaches to understanding how Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries make decisions about treatment options. “Through these models, the agency hopes to demonstrate the impact of a more patient-centered decision-making process on overall patient engagement in a health-care system charged with delivering better care, more affordable care, and increased transparency in care quality and cost,” PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho states. “Patient engagement is my ministry and these new CMMI decision-making models will be an important first step in ensuring that patients are given the role they need, want, and deserve when it comes to their individual care decisions. As these new models evolve, please share your experiences with us so we can effectively work with Congress and the new Administration to ensure patient engagement remains an important focus for CMS in the new year and beyond.” Click here to view the blog post.
3. The Huffington Post: Top Ten Medical Research Issues and Trends to Watch in 2017
FasterCures has published a list in The Huffington Post outlining the top ten medical research issues to watch in 2017. Among these include a focus on quantitative and qualitative metrics of the value of patient-centricity and patient engagement, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), the Precision Medicine Initiative, data sharing, the evaluation of value frameworks, and more. In talking about the evolution of value frameworks, the article notes, “This is a trend that must accelerate if it’s to catch up with the debate about health-care costs in this country.” Click here to view the article.
4. Video: Dr Joseph Alvarnas on Importance of Patient Voice in Value-Based Cancer Care
In a video published in the American Journal of Managed Care, Dr. Joseph Alvarnas of the City of Hope and editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology discusses the importance of the patient voice in value-based cancer care. “The transformation to value-based oncology care must be centered upon the priorities and needs of patients and their families,” Dr. Alvarnas said. “This vision is starting to be incorporated in areas like the Oncology Care Model, which looks at patient-reported outcomes and experiences.” Click here to view the video.
5. The PCORI Blog: The Importance of the Patient Voice
Patient Family Advisor Alexis Synder emphasizes the importance of including the patient voice in healthcare in a recent PCORI blog post. Providing anecdotes drawn from her personal life, Alexis shares her experiences in the healthcare system when she noticed that there was a need to include patients and families in the healthcare decision making and recovery process. In doing so, she highlights the importance of PCORI. “The patient voice is so critical,” she writes. “Providers and healthcare systems can best help patients in their times of need when patients, as well as their caregivers, are fully included in decision making. This is where the work being done by PCORI is so critically important. PCORI recognizes that it takes the whole community.” Click here to view the blog post.
6. The PCORI Blog: Data to Drive Individualized Clinical Research
A recent Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) blog post discusses the creation of PCORnet, PCORI’s initiative to harness the power of vast volumes of health data and patient-reported outcomes. “PCORI has long recognized the value of accessing large collections of health data to make clinical research faster, easier, and less costly to conduct,” the blog post shares. “Having data from tens of thousands—or tens of millions—of people can enable research teams to find out more about how different therapies affect individual patients. That knowledge, in turn, will allow patients, their caregivers, and their clinicians to make better-informed healthcare decisions.” Click here to view the blog post.
7. Sign and Share Petition to Give Patients and People Served by Health Systems a Voice in Healthcare
Sign and share PIPC Chairman Tony Coelho’s recently launched petition calling on health care stakeholders to recognize patients and people served by health system’s movement for greater say in their own health care. “We urge both the media and politicians to take heed of what matters to us… because in the end, we are all patients,” Chairman Coelho writes.
Join the petition to all those who define your health care to say…
- We insist that on engaging patients, caregivers, and people living with incurable diseases or lifelong disabilities in health care decision-making.
- We want to be at the center of health care.
- We want policies to explicitly empower consumers, patients and providers.
- We want to know what decisions about our health are being made by the government.
- We want a health care system that rewards the outcomes that matter to us as patients and participants in this nation’s health system.
- We reject the notion that we should be bundled into one-size-fits-all care models, or valued against one-size-fits-all judgments of cost-effectiveness. Don’t tell us what we’re worth – ask us what we value.
- None of us is average. We are unique individuals with different genetics, characteristics, needs and preferences. Especially in this promising new age of personalized medicine, we are confounded by proposals in vital programs like Medicare that aim to eliminate, rather than empower, choice of treatments.
PIPC encourages every individual to sign and share the petition in order to increase its impact and raise awareness of the important issue. Click here to view and sign the petition.
8. Upcoming Events and Webinars
PCORI Board of Governors Meeting
January 10, 2017, 12:00-1:00PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 12, 2017, 1:00-2:30PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 18, 2017, 10:00-11:30 AM ET
Click here for details.
Getting to Know PCORI: From Application to Closeout (January 2017)
January 23 - 24, 2017, Washington Marriott Georgetown
Click here for details.
PCORI Online Training
January 24, 2017, 1:00-2:30 PM ET
Click here for details.
PCORI Board of Governors Meeting
January 24, 2017, 12:00-1:30 PM ET
Click here for details.
Optimal Treatment Sequences for Nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 25, 2017, 11:00 AM -12:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
Dissemination and Implementation Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 25, 2017, 3:00-4:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
Pragmatic Clinical Studies Applicant LOI Town Hall - Cycle 1 2017
January 26, 2017, 2:30-4:00 PM ET
Click here for details.
2017 National Health Policy Conference
January 30 - 31, 2017, Marriott, Marquis, Washington D.C.
Click here for details.
National Value-Based Payment and Pay for Performance Summit
March 8, 2017, San Francisco, CA
Click here for details.
Evidence-Based Guidelines Affecting Policy, Practice and Stakeholders (E-GAPPS III) Conference
March 20-21, 2017, New York, NY
Click here for details.
9. Medical Journal Articles
Improving Outpatient Primary Medication Adherence with Physician Guided, Automated Dispensing, click here to view.
Association Between Adherence to Medications for COPD and Medications for Other Chronic Conditions in COPD Patients, click here to view.
Commentary: Precision Benefit Design—Using "Smarter" Deductibles to Better Engage Consumers and Mitigate Cost-Related Nonadherence, click here to view.
Levers for Addressing Medical Underuse and Overuse: Achieving High-Value Health Care, click here to view.
From Universal Health Coverage to Right Care for Health, click here to view.
AMCP Partnership Forum: Enabling the Exchange of Clinical and Economic Information Pre-FDA Approval, click here to view.
ACOs Serving High Proportions Of Racial And Ethnic Minorities Lag In Quality Performance, click here to view.
Detecting Heterogeneous Treatment Effects to Guide Personalized Blood Pressure Treatment: A Modeling Study of Randomized Clinical Trials, click here to view.
An Evidence-Based Medicine Approach to Antihyperglycemic Therapy in Diabetes Mellitus to Overcome Overtreatment, click here to view.
Perspective: Patient-Reported Outcomes — Harnessing Patients' Voices to Improve Clinical Care, click here to view.
10. AHRQ Effective Program Updates
Prioritization and Selection of Harms for Inclusion in Systematic Reviews, click here to view.
Assessing the Risk of Bias of Individual Studies in Systematic Reviews of Health Care Interventions: An Update, click here to view.
