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P4P
Will HITECH Lead to Innovation? The Continuing Cat/Dog Dialogue
Will the recently passed HITECH legislation — the federal stimulus funding for health IT — encourage innovation? or will it lock in outdated electronic health record (EHR) technology?
It’s a mixed bag — HITECH legislation is both dog-like (innovative) and catlike (protecting incumbents).  I’ll refresh your memory below on more specific definitions of cats and dogs.
Among many other reasons, HITECH is dog-like primarily because it has ended the question of WHETHER the U.S. is really serious about health IT reform. HITECH spells out […]
How Should Fed HIT Dollars Be Spent? Cat vs. Dog POV.
“Where’s the single best place to get up to speed on how the Feds should spend $20 billion to advance health information technology (HIT)?”
A colleague asked me this question a couple of days ago, and at first I hesitated. Then it struck me — Matthew Holt’s The Health Care Blog has become the focal point for discussion of this critical topic.
Matthew’s very recent article — Cats & dogs: Can we find unity on health care IT change? — summarizes the two […]
Medicare Health Support: 8 Takeaways on Building Better Bridges
by Thomas Wilson, PhD, DrPH and Vince Kuraitis
What’s the right metaphor for Medicare Health Support (MHS), CMS’ major experiment with disease management for Medicare beneficiaries? We prefer to look it as a bridge failure that presents an opportunity to improve future engineering and design.
We’ve now had the time to read, reread, and reread again the very recent report from Research Triangle Institute (RTI) — Evaluation of Phase I of the Medicare Health Support Pilot Program Under Traditional Fee-for-Service Medicare: […]
Doctors Bat A Thousand in Year Two of PGP Medicare Demo
CMS announced today that all 10 participating groups in the Physician Group Practice (PGP) demonstration achieved quality targets, and that the groups are sharing $16.7 million in incentive payments. The program rewards providers for improved outcomes delivered to Medicare patients with congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, and diabetes.
This goes a long way in explaining Medicare’s seeming lack of enthusiasm for past or future disease management demos with DM companies and/or health plans.
Congratulations doctors!
UPDATE: The doctors might have batted […]
Are HIEs a Dead Horse?
Do local Health Information Exchange (HIE) participants have the right economic motivations to make them work? Â
A report released this week raises strong doubts. The study — Creating Sustainable Local Health Information Exchanges: Can Barriers to Stakeholder Participation be Overcome? — was  funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change (CSHSC). The term HIE is often used interchangeably with RHIO (Regional Health Information Exchange).
What’s different about this study? The CSHSC report goes a step further than other recent reports […]
HealthSpring “Gets” Physician Engagement.
I’ve written a lot recently about Medicare Health Support (MHS). We are learning a lot from MHS about what DOESN’T work with the frail, elderly Medicare population.
But, what DOES work?
One key lesson emerging from MHS is the need to integrate and engage physicians and other local care providers…easier said than done.
Health Wonk Review at e-CareManagement
Welcome!
Since this is my first time hosting the Health Wonk Review, I really didn’t know what to expect.  I have to say that I’ve learned a lot while poring over the insight and wisdom of my fellow bloggers. Fortunately, this week’s entries fell into neat categories:
In-Store Clinics
Physicians
Problems — U.S. & World Health Systems
Solutions — U.S. & World Health Systems
Cats, Dogs and Kangaroos
Just in case that last category, doesn’t look too familiar, let’s revisit the whole point of the Health Wonk Review:
Health Wonk […]
The PowerPoint — DM Megatrends 2008
Last week I did the major annual tune-up of my presentation on Disease Management Megatrends for the MCOL Future Care Web Summit.Â
I’m pleased to share a copy of the PowerPoint presentation with you, and I hope you find it useful and provocative. You can view and/or download a copy here (6MB). This version contains 77 slides, which would be about the length I’d use for a 3 hour workshop; you’d see a more compact version for a conference keynote, Board summary, or management […]
Podcast: The 20 Minute Version of “DM Megatrends”
Over the past week I’ve been doing a major tune-up of my presentation on Disease Management Megatrends for the annual MCOL Future Care Web Summit.Â
More typically, DM Megatrends is 45–90 minute presentation with accompanying PowerPoint slides.
As part of the Web Summit, the good folks at MCOL asked me to do a short podcast on highlights of this presentation. They’re allowing me to share it with you… click here to save or listen to the podcast.
fyi, the DM Megatrends are:
MAGNITUDE: We are just scratching the […]
Today’s BFO: How can P4P Work W/O a QB?
Translation Todays blinding flash of the obvious (BFO): How can you expect pay-for-performance (P4P) programs in Medicare to work with out a designated physician quarterback (QB)?
Please allow me to elaborate.
P4P programs are based on two assumptions:
Patients are assigned to a physician or a practice that will have primary responsibility for their care, and
That a meaningful fraction of the care physicians deliver is for patients from whom they have primary responsibility
Wouldn’t you expect that this would be problematic for older (Medicare) […]