In This Week’s Issue:
1. HHS Launches Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, click here to view the article.
2. NHC: Meaningful Patient Engagement: Can We Agree on a Framework?, click here to view the article.
3. Fierce Health IT: PCORnet Project to Engage Health Systems, click here to view the article.
4. Here's One Flaw of a Patient-Centered Healthcare System, click here to view the article.
5. Wall Street Journal: How Big Data Can Make Your Doctor Smarter, click here to view the blog.
6. PCORI’s Joe Selby Comments on CER Survey, click here to view the statement.
7. PCORI Blog: Building Community Among Funders of Patient-Engaged Research, click here to view the blog.
8. Pink Sheet: Comparative Effectiveness Of MS Drugs, Biosimilars On PCORI's Radar, click here to view the article (subscription only).
1. HHS Launches Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, click here to view the article.
2. NHC: Meaningful Patient Engagement: Can We Agree on a Framework?, click here to view the article.
3. Fierce Health IT: PCORnet Project to Engage Health Systems, click here to view the article.
4. Here's One Flaw of a Patient-Centered Healthcare System, click here to view the article.
5. Wall Street Journal: How Big Data Can Make Your Doctor Smarter, click here to view the blog.
6. PCORI’s Joe Selby Comments on CER Survey, click here to view the statement.
7. PCORI Blog: Building Community Among Funders of Patient-Engaged Research, click here to view the blog.
8. Pink Sheet: Comparative Effectiveness Of MS Drugs, Biosimilars On PCORI's Radar, click here to view the article (subscription only).
1. HHS Launches Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network
As reported last week in Healthcare Finance News, “a band of big-name healthcare payers and providers [have] jumped into the value-based arena, pledging to support timetables set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to tie more of their payment to value over the next few years. Participants of the new Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, which the HHS said includes patients, insurers, providers, states, consumer groups and employers, are expected to scale their value-based payments to 30 percent by 2016 and 50 percent by 2018. The transition from traditional fee-for-service, where insurers and government payers pay providers a set amount for each service performed, to value-based, in which the payers considers clinical outcomes and certain benchmarks tied to the overall quality of the care given in the payment calculation, is among the top issues in healthcare since the adoption of the Affordable Care Act. Officials said the network… will act as a forum for participants where they can convene and hopefully collaborate on programs that will drive conversions to value-based payments or adoption of alternative models such as accountable care organizations.” Click hereto view the article.
2. NHC: Meaningful Patient Engagement: Can We Agree on a Framework?
In a recent article in The American Journal of Managed Care, Marc Boutin, CEO of the National Health Council comments, “there are countless opportunities in which working with patients is both possible and valuable. Stakeholders in both the private and public sectors have been increasingly experimenting with different engagement strategies to better understand the distinct perspectives of patients with chronic conditions, and how to incorporate these data into the decision-making process for new treatments… As the diverse healthcare community increasingly seeks to integrate the patient voice into the process of developing new therapies that address what is most important to individuals with chronic conditions, there is a growing need for a more structured, consistent, and meaningful approach to engaging patients.” Click here to view the article.
3. Fierce Health IT: PCORnet Project to Engage Health Systems
Fierce Health IT reported last week that “the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has announced $5 million in funding for a project to demonstrate the ability of its ‘network of networks,’ known as PCORnet...In the first step, it will provide $1 million to enable sites within PCORnet partner networks to work with health systems leaders to identify and prioritize a set of data-driven research activities of high interest to those organizations and their clinicians. It will then provide up to $4 million to fund up to five one-year research studies on those priority topics.” Click here to view the article.
4. Here's One Flaw of a Patient-Centered Healthcare System
The concept of patient-centered healthcare is affecting how device makers think of caring for them beyond the hospital walls, how hospitals of the future will look like and how a care delivery system should be developed. And patient-reported outcomes are also getting more and more attention. ‘We have more recently established a committee as of this week to help us on patient reported outcomes,’ said Thomas Barber, an orthopedic surgeon and chairman of the Council of Advocacy, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons on Wednesday. ‘I think there was a sense that we weren't measuring what's important to patients. Patients have a different view sometimes than doctors on what is a successful operation and so we recognize that and accept it.’ Barber went on to add that patient-reported outcomes need to be balanced with other quality measures. ‘There is a happy medium where I think we use patient-reported outcomes because I think that it is important, but at the same time we use regular quality metrics - everything from complications and infections as well as say things like reoperations and readmissions,’ Barber said.” Click here to view the article.
5. Wall Street Journal: How Big Data Can Make Your Doctor Smarter
Dr. John Sotos commented last week in The Wall Street Journal, “Now that many physician practices have moved to electronic medical records—a mixed blessing, to be sure—the next and most important step is enabling clinical queries of the national experience in treating specific subsets of patients... Participation by patients should be voluntary, but opt-out. Compassion for the sick would make opt-outs uncommon. Government oversight is best because no one wants their medical record “monetized,” as a corporate overlord would inevitably be driven to do. A national query-system would be of the people, by the people, and for the people. This system would complement, not replace, today's gold-standard source of clinical information, the randomized trial.” Click here to view the blog.
6. PCORI’s Joe Selby Comments on CER Survey
For the past five years, the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) has conducted surveys with a wide range of health care stakeholders regarding the perceived value of comparative effectiveness research (CER). PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby recently commented on the results of this year’s survey: “With more than 90 percent of respondents agreeing that comparative effectiveness research (CER) is important for our nation's healthcare, the National Pharmaceutical Council's fifth annual CER survey reaffirms the need for evidence that helps patients and those who care for them make better informed decisions... All of our initiatives – including our pragmatic clinical studies initiative and our efforts to build PCORnet, a national patient-centered clinical data research network – aim to generate real-world evidence about what works best for which patients. We’ll begin to see the first results of the CER studies we’ve funded later this year. We look forward to working with our many partners to disseminate and implement the results. Click here to view the statement.
7. PCORI Blog: Building Community Among Funders of Patient-Engaged Research
PCORI’s Susan Sheridan, MBA, MIM, DHL, Suzanne Schrandt, JD, Laura Forsythe, PhD, MPH and Tsahai Tafari, PhD comment on The PCORI Blog, “Engaging patients and other healthcare stakeholders in the research process is a fast-growing trend. We are truly seeing a culture change as more clinical scientists recognize the value of incorporating patient and other stakeholder perspectives to make their research more relevant and feasible and its findings more useful. In addition, various funding organizations have begun engaging patients in reviewing research proposals and other activities. But the trend is still relatively new, and few resources are available to guide these important efforts… One area of urgent interest is training: we want to assess the spectrum of patient, other stakeholder, and researcher needs. We would then determine what sorts of training are now available and what must yet be developed. Roundtable participants noted that some organizations have created training programs and recommended the establishment of a bank of such resources that all funders could access.” Click here to view the blog.
8. Pink Sheet: Comparative Effectiveness Of MS Drugs, Biosimilars On PCORI's Radar
As Cathy Kelly reported in The Pink Sheet last week, “the MS topic has been moving through the PCORI research idea pipeline since last year, and the organization is holding a multi-stakeholder workshop April 2 to discuss specific comparative effectiveness research questions relating to treatment of the disease. As to biosimilars, PCORI was alerted to the need for CE research on such products by representatives from pharmacy benefit management organizations at a March 19 roundtable discussion. PCORI staff will now begin analyzing approaches to studying biosimilars, and a plan for study may emerge in about a year, [PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby] said in an interview.” Click here to view the article (subscription only).
As reported last week in Healthcare Finance News, “a band of big-name healthcare payers and providers [have] jumped into the value-based arena, pledging to support timetables set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to tie more of their payment to value over the next few years. Participants of the new Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, which the HHS said includes patients, insurers, providers, states, consumer groups and employers, are expected to scale their value-based payments to 30 percent by 2016 and 50 percent by 2018. The transition from traditional fee-for-service, where insurers and government payers pay providers a set amount for each service performed, to value-based, in which the payers considers clinical outcomes and certain benchmarks tied to the overall quality of the care given in the payment calculation, is among the top issues in healthcare since the adoption of the Affordable Care Act. Officials said the network… will act as a forum for participants where they can convene and hopefully collaborate on programs that will drive conversions to value-based payments or adoption of alternative models such as accountable care organizations.” Click hereto view the article.
2. NHC: Meaningful Patient Engagement: Can We Agree on a Framework?
In a recent article in The American Journal of Managed Care, Marc Boutin, CEO of the National Health Council comments, “there are countless opportunities in which working with patients is both possible and valuable. Stakeholders in both the private and public sectors have been increasingly experimenting with different engagement strategies to better understand the distinct perspectives of patients with chronic conditions, and how to incorporate these data into the decision-making process for new treatments… As the diverse healthcare community increasingly seeks to integrate the patient voice into the process of developing new therapies that address what is most important to individuals with chronic conditions, there is a growing need for a more structured, consistent, and meaningful approach to engaging patients.” Click here to view the article.
3. Fierce Health IT: PCORnet Project to Engage Health Systems
Fierce Health IT reported last week that “the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has announced $5 million in funding for a project to demonstrate the ability of its ‘network of networks,’ known as PCORnet...In the first step, it will provide $1 million to enable sites within PCORnet partner networks to work with health systems leaders to identify and prioritize a set of data-driven research activities of high interest to those organizations and their clinicians. It will then provide up to $4 million to fund up to five one-year research studies on those priority topics.” Click here to view the article.
4. Here's One Flaw of a Patient-Centered Healthcare System
The concept of patient-centered healthcare is affecting how device makers think of caring for them beyond the hospital walls, how hospitals of the future will look like and how a care delivery system should be developed. And patient-reported outcomes are also getting more and more attention. ‘We have more recently established a committee as of this week to help us on patient reported outcomes,’ said Thomas Barber, an orthopedic surgeon and chairman of the Council of Advocacy, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons on Wednesday. ‘I think there was a sense that we weren't measuring what's important to patients. Patients have a different view sometimes than doctors on what is a successful operation and so we recognize that and accept it.’ Barber went on to add that patient-reported outcomes need to be balanced with other quality measures. ‘There is a happy medium where I think we use patient-reported outcomes because I think that it is important, but at the same time we use regular quality metrics - everything from complications and infections as well as say things like reoperations and readmissions,’ Barber said.” Click here to view the article.
5. Wall Street Journal: How Big Data Can Make Your Doctor Smarter
Dr. John Sotos commented last week in The Wall Street Journal, “Now that many physician practices have moved to electronic medical records—a mixed blessing, to be sure—the next and most important step is enabling clinical queries of the national experience in treating specific subsets of patients... Participation by patients should be voluntary, but opt-out. Compassion for the sick would make opt-outs uncommon. Government oversight is best because no one wants their medical record “monetized,” as a corporate overlord would inevitably be driven to do. A national query-system would be of the people, by the people, and for the people. This system would complement, not replace, today's gold-standard source of clinical information, the randomized trial.” Click here to view the blog.
6. PCORI’s Joe Selby Comments on CER Survey
For the past five years, the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) has conducted surveys with a wide range of health care stakeholders regarding the perceived value of comparative effectiveness research (CER). PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby recently commented on the results of this year’s survey: “With more than 90 percent of respondents agreeing that comparative effectiveness research (CER) is important for our nation's healthcare, the National Pharmaceutical Council's fifth annual CER survey reaffirms the need for evidence that helps patients and those who care for them make better informed decisions... All of our initiatives – including our pragmatic clinical studies initiative and our efforts to build PCORnet, a national patient-centered clinical data research network – aim to generate real-world evidence about what works best for which patients. We’ll begin to see the first results of the CER studies we’ve funded later this year. We look forward to working with our many partners to disseminate and implement the results. Click here to view the statement.
7. PCORI Blog: Building Community Among Funders of Patient-Engaged Research
PCORI’s Susan Sheridan, MBA, MIM, DHL, Suzanne Schrandt, JD, Laura Forsythe, PhD, MPH and Tsahai Tafari, PhD comment on The PCORI Blog, “Engaging patients and other healthcare stakeholders in the research process is a fast-growing trend. We are truly seeing a culture change as more clinical scientists recognize the value of incorporating patient and other stakeholder perspectives to make their research more relevant and feasible and its findings more useful. In addition, various funding organizations have begun engaging patients in reviewing research proposals and other activities. But the trend is still relatively new, and few resources are available to guide these important efforts… One area of urgent interest is training: we want to assess the spectrum of patient, other stakeholder, and researcher needs. We would then determine what sorts of training are now available and what must yet be developed. Roundtable participants noted that some organizations have created training programs and recommended the establishment of a bank of such resources that all funders could access.” Click here to view the blog.
8. Pink Sheet: Comparative Effectiveness Of MS Drugs, Biosimilars On PCORI's Radar
As Cathy Kelly reported in The Pink Sheet last week, “the MS topic has been moving through the PCORI research idea pipeline since last year, and the organization is holding a multi-stakeholder workshop April 2 to discuss specific comparative effectiveness research questions relating to treatment of the disease. As to biosimilars, PCORI was alerted to the need for CE research on such products by representatives from pharmacy benefit management organizations at a March 19 roundtable discussion. PCORI staff will now begin analyzing approaches to studying biosimilars, and a plan for study may emerge in about a year, [PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby] said in an interview.” Click here to view the article (subscription only).
