In This Week’s Issue:
- Patrick Conway: CMS’ Core Quality Measures Collaborative: A Rationale And Framework For Public-Private Quality Measure Alignment, click here to view the blog post.
- New York Times: Cancer Doctors Offer Way to Compare Medicines, Including by Cost, click here to view the article.
- Healthcare Informatics: Centers of Excellence to Study Dissemination of Evidence-Based Care Practices, click here to view the article.
- Blog: Here Are the 5 Reasons Republicans Are Trying to Cut Research on Evidence-Based Medicine, click here to view the article.
1. Patrick Conway: CMS’ Core Quality Measures Collaborative: A Rationale And Framework For Public-Private Quality Measure Alignment
In a recent post for Health Affairs Blog, CMS’ Patrick Conway and the members of the Core Quality Measures Collaborative Workgroup comment, “In this changing environment, health care quality measurement must evolve to meet stakeholder expectations… To realize this vision, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and its member plans’ Chief Medical Officers convened leaders from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Quality Forum (NQF), as well as national physician organizations, to form The Core Quality Measures Collaborative in 2014… Quality measurement has helped to improve many aspects of health care delivery and change the culture of the health care ecosystem. By annually tracking more than 200 measures since 2003, [AHRQ] reports that the quality of health care is improving. This is evidenced by the retirement of certain quality measures that have effectively ‘topped out,’ such as Aspirin at Arrival for Acute Myocardial Infarction. While the improvements in quality are to be celebrated, AHRQ qualifies the status of health care quality in the US as ‘fair,’ suggesting that the existing framework for quality measurement is ready for the next evolution of refinement.” Click here to view the blog post.
2. New York Times: Cancer Doctors Offer Way to Compare Medicines, Including by Cost
As Andrew Pollack reported last week in The New York Times, “Alarmed by the rapid escalation in the price of cancer drugs, the nation's leading oncology society unveiled on Monday a new way for doctors and patients to evaluate different treatments — one that pointedly includes a medicine's cost as well as its effectiveness and side effects. The release by the American Society of Clinical Oncology of what it calls its ‘value framework,’ is part of a change in thinking among doctors, who once largely chose drugs based on their medical attributes alone. The major cardiology societies, for instance, are also now starting to factor cost into their evaluation of drugs… Evaluating [cost] would put doctors in the role of being stewards of societal resources. That s somewhat of a controversial role for doctors, since it might conflict with their duty to protect the patient in front of them.” Click here to view the article.
On Tuesday, PhRMA’s Randy Burkholder published a blog post commenting that “ASCO's call to focus value on the patient-physician interaction echoes the conclusions made by leaders from across the cancer community in recent journal articles, which call for moving ‘beyond traditional approaches to comparative effectiveness research and health technology assessments to achieve better alignment with patient needs and values, as well as with the emerging science and changing clinical practice of oncology.’ We hope that ASCO continues to move the framework in a direction that is focused on patient values and physician-patient decision-making rather than shifting to focus on payer decision making and average value.” Click here to view the blog post.
3. Healthcare Informatics: Centers of Excellence to Study Dissemination of Evidence-Based Care Practices
Healthcare Informatics reports in a new article, “the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently announced three grants totaling $52 million to create centers of excellence to study how high-performing health care systems promote evidence-based practices in delivering care. AHRQ will fund a coordinating center to help facilitate collaboration between the three centers in the development of a national compendium of the performance of health care systems across the United States. AHRQ also recently announced another PCOR dissemination initiative, EvidenceNow, which is focused on helping small- and medium-sized primary care practices in 12 states improve the heart health of their nearly 8 million patients.” Click here to view the article.
4. Blog: Here Are the 5 Reasons Republicans Are Trying to Cut Research on Evidence-Based Medicine
As Eric Patashnik opined last week in The Washington Post, “the good news is that the federal government is now making a significant investment in health services and patient-centered outcomes research to identify waste and improve the safety, effectiveness and quality of care. The bad news is that House Republicans are trying to abolish one of the main agencies carrying out this research, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and cut the funding of another, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)... Clearly most doctors do believe in the need for research on evidence-based medicine... ‘Cutting funding to AHRQ would be a huge mistake in our mission to improve the quality & efficiency of healthcare,’ tweeted one surgeon. But the physician community has not organized around the issue. There is a good chance the proposed cuts to evidence-based medicine research won't be enacted in this appropriations cycle. Nonetheless, the episode is a reminder that information is a powerful resource in government — one that can be destroyed when people aren't looking.” Click here to view the article.
In a recent post for Health Affairs Blog, CMS’ Patrick Conway and the members of the Core Quality Measures Collaborative Workgroup comment, “In this changing environment, health care quality measurement must evolve to meet stakeholder expectations… To realize this vision, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and its member plans’ Chief Medical Officers convened leaders from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Quality Forum (NQF), as well as national physician organizations, to form The Core Quality Measures Collaborative in 2014… Quality measurement has helped to improve many aspects of health care delivery and change the culture of the health care ecosystem. By annually tracking more than 200 measures since 2003, [AHRQ] reports that the quality of health care is improving. This is evidenced by the retirement of certain quality measures that have effectively ‘topped out,’ such as Aspirin at Arrival for Acute Myocardial Infarction. While the improvements in quality are to be celebrated, AHRQ qualifies the status of health care quality in the US as ‘fair,’ suggesting that the existing framework for quality measurement is ready for the next evolution of refinement.” Click here to view the blog post.
2. New York Times: Cancer Doctors Offer Way to Compare Medicines, Including by Cost
As Andrew Pollack reported last week in The New York Times, “Alarmed by the rapid escalation in the price of cancer drugs, the nation's leading oncology society unveiled on Monday a new way for doctors and patients to evaluate different treatments — one that pointedly includes a medicine's cost as well as its effectiveness and side effects. The release by the American Society of Clinical Oncology of what it calls its ‘value framework,’ is part of a change in thinking among doctors, who once largely chose drugs based on their medical attributes alone. The major cardiology societies, for instance, are also now starting to factor cost into their evaluation of drugs… Evaluating [cost] would put doctors in the role of being stewards of societal resources. That s somewhat of a controversial role for doctors, since it might conflict with their duty to protect the patient in front of them.” Click here to view the article.
On Tuesday, PhRMA’s Randy Burkholder published a blog post commenting that “ASCO's call to focus value on the patient-physician interaction echoes the conclusions made by leaders from across the cancer community in recent journal articles, which call for moving ‘beyond traditional approaches to comparative effectiveness research and health technology assessments to achieve better alignment with patient needs and values, as well as with the emerging science and changing clinical practice of oncology.’ We hope that ASCO continues to move the framework in a direction that is focused on patient values and physician-patient decision-making rather than shifting to focus on payer decision making and average value.” Click here to view the blog post.
3. Healthcare Informatics: Centers of Excellence to Study Dissemination of Evidence-Based Care Practices
Healthcare Informatics reports in a new article, “the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently announced three grants totaling $52 million to create centers of excellence to study how high-performing health care systems promote evidence-based practices in delivering care. AHRQ will fund a coordinating center to help facilitate collaboration between the three centers in the development of a national compendium of the performance of health care systems across the United States. AHRQ also recently announced another PCOR dissemination initiative, EvidenceNow, which is focused on helping small- and medium-sized primary care practices in 12 states improve the heart health of their nearly 8 million patients.” Click here to view the article.
4. Blog: Here Are the 5 Reasons Republicans Are Trying to Cut Research on Evidence-Based Medicine
As Eric Patashnik opined last week in The Washington Post, “the good news is that the federal government is now making a significant investment in health services and patient-centered outcomes research to identify waste and improve the safety, effectiveness and quality of care. The bad news is that House Republicans are trying to abolish one of the main agencies carrying out this research, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and cut the funding of another, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)... Clearly most doctors do believe in the need for research on evidence-based medicine... ‘Cutting funding to AHRQ would be a huge mistake in our mission to improve the quality & efficiency of healthcare,’ tweeted one surgeon. But the physician community has not organized around the issue. There is a good chance the proposed cuts to evidence-based medicine research won't be enacted in this appropriations cycle. Nonetheless, the episode is a reminder that information is a powerful resource in government — one that can be destroyed when people aren't looking.” Click here to view the article.
