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population health

Overview: Here Come Stages 2 and 3 of HITECH!

 

We’ve spent the past year creating the MU (meaningful use) requirements for Stage 1 of the HITECH act.  As shown by the diagram above, Stage 1 focuses on Data Capture and Sharing. Now it’s time to begin to focus on Stage 2 (Advanced Clinical Processes) and Stage 3 (Improved Outcomes).

The current generation of EMRs (electronic medical records) were designed primarily to assist care providers with clinical documentation, billing, and maximizing revenues. They were not designed to enable care coordination and […]

HITECH Health IT Legislation: Opportunities for the DMAA Community

Dr. Don Storey and I spoke at the at The Forum 09 conference in San Diego earlier this week. The DMAA publication “The Continuum” had an excellent writeup of our enthusiastically received presentation. 

Here’s a copy of our PowerPoint slides…

HITECH Health IT Legislation: Opportunities for the DMAA Community
View more presentations from vincek.

and here’s DMAA’s writeup:

Helping physicians and hospitals meet the “meaningful use” criteria for federal support for health information technology under recently passed legislation represents a keen opportunity for the population health management industry, presenters at […]

How Much Health-Related Productivity Loss is Really Avoidable? And Why Should I Care??

by John E. Riedel

Study breaks new ground in calculating the "normal impairment factor."

We know that poor health accounts for a considerable amount of productivity loss-anywhere from 1 ½ to 3 times direct medical costs.  The potential for disease prevention and disease management programs to reduce productivity loss has, for obvious reasons, caught the attention of healthcare purchasers.  But let’s be careful about making big claims to "recapture" productivity loss.  People find it tough to change health behaviors.  And, […]

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: […]

Complimentary Webinar on Comparative Effectiveness Sponsored by Population Health Impact Institute (PHII)

The message is clear from Washington – “Comparative Effectiveness” has been proposed as the foundation for coverage decisions in Medicare.  As the feds lead – this will more than likely "trickle down" to the commercial sector.

The Population Health Impact Institute (PHII) has convened national experts to develop a practical, comparative-based system to help purchasers and payers evaluate the methods and results used in all kinds of population health management programs – including medical, case and disease management, benefit design, value-based […]

Attend the Best DM/Population Health Conference of the Year!

In a little less than three weeks, DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance will open its 10th annual meeting , in Hollywood, Fla. – a notable milestone for an organization that has evolved with its membership over the past decade.

I’ll be there, presenting with Dr. Victor Villagra on the "March toward Data Interoperability" and the outlook for disease management.

The content this year promises to be among the best yet, with a new track on […]

The Medical Home: Pull the RUC Out

This third and final post in the series addresses questions about the future of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCHM):

What’s problematic about using the RUC methodology with the PCMH?
What’s the optimal level for a PCMH care management fee?
Should primary care leaders pull the RUC out? How?

What’s Problematic About Using the RUC Methodology with the PCMH?

There are at least two reasons for not having the RUC methodology seen anywhere in the same county country as the PCMH. First, the RUC methodology doesn’t […]

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 […]

Disease Management and the Medicare Health Support (MHS) Project: “Houston, we have a problem.”

Thomas Wilson, PhD, DrPH and Vince Kuraitis, JD, MBA

The conventional wisdom in the disease management (DM) community has been that the Medicare Health Support (MHS) project would provide the evidence to resolve two issues:

First, MHS would once-and-for-all resolve the issue of “does DM have ROI? (return on investment).” It was thought that the randomized control trial process employed in MHS would provide scientific evidence to prove that DM has a positive ROI, clearing the way for unqualified acceptance and widespread […]

First “Official” Report on Medicare Health Support DM Pilot Finds Virtually No Evidence of Success

I know that I’m sounding like a broken record.

The first “official” results from the Medicare Health Support (MHS) disease management (DM) pilot projects were published last week.  While the results are preliminary, there is virtually no evidence of any early success.  Here are three key findings from the executive summary of the report: