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Archive for the "Health Policy/Reform" category

The 6th Thing to Watch in the Medicare ACO Regulations

Health care lobbyists and advocates are bracing for six pages of the health care reform law to explode into more than 1,000 pages of federal regulations when the Department of Health and Human Services releases its long-delayed accountable care organization rules this week. Politico What should you be looking for as you snuggle by the [...]

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The Crucial Distinction Between “Accountable Care” and ACOs

While in Philadelphia earlier this week, my colleague Dr. David Nace presented me with a print copy of McKesson Relay Health’s newest whitepaper — Providing Accountability: Accountable Care Concepts for Providers.  I felt honored as he handed it to me and confided that it was one of only six copies in print.  I took time to read it [...]

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Is Economic Credentialing A Tool for Primary Care to Lead ACOs?

Is economic credentialing — the use of economic factors such as loyalty and utilization rates in the physician credentialing process — a potential tool for primary care physicians to lead ACOs?   and reestablish the vitality of primary care in American health care? Keith Wright and Gregory Drutchas’ incisive article Economic Credentialing: A Prescription To Secure Shared [...]

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Summarizing Early PCAST HIT Critiques: “Brilliant, but they didn’t do all their technical homework.”

Last week PCAST (The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) issued a major report — “Realizing the Full Potential of Health Information Technology to Improve Healthcare for Americans: The Path Forward”.  The reviews are filtering in and I’m seeing two major themes:  The vision is on target:  “extraordinary”, “breathtakingly innovative”. These guys didn’t [...]

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Is “CMS Innovation Center” an Oxymoron?

A press release earlier this week announced the new CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. If you went to their Twitter feed today, here’s what you’d see: This struck me as a great pictorial representation of the broader challenges the CMS Innovation Center faces: They’ve kinda sorta figured out there’s a conversation going on out there [...]

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A Dark Horse in ACO Formation: Large Physician Groups

Kudos to the AMGA (American Medical Group Association) for advancing the cause of physician-led accountable care organizations (ACOs)! A few days ago it “convened leadership teams from 22 leading medical groups and organized systems of care at the inaugural meeting of the AMGA ACO Development Collaborative”. In many communities, hospitals (delivery systems) will be the “natural” organization to lead [...]

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The Achilles Heel of ACOs? Shared Savings Payment Model Unlikely to Motivate Hospitals

Sometimes you read something and the full impact doesn’t hit you until hours — perhaps days — later.  As I was out mountain biking today, the importance of something I ran across yesterday suddenly hit me. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are today’s cure-du-jour for reforming the health care delivery system. Bob Berensen, MD of the Urban [...]

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Status Report: HITPC and Workgroup Activities on HITECH Stages 2 & 3

  OK, let me be the first to admit that today’s “just-the-facts-ma’am” post might be a little dry…but trust me, its really important stuff to know in understanding the process of how the Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) and its workgroups are approaching formulating recommendations for HITECH Stages 2 and 3. At this point at least two different [...]

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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 [...]

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