Just about everybody in the world has been talking about problems that Medicare is having with chronic disease management (DM) demonstration projects…everybody except the folks at Medicare.
Well, that’s finally changing. Today’s POE (plain old English) award is presented to Linda Magno, Director, Medicare Demonstrations at CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services).
Here are a couple of slides from Ms. Magno’s presentation at the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative Summit on November 7:
It’s refreshing to see Ms. Magno provide straightforward facts and concise interpretations about Medicare chronic care demo progress. I also saw Ms. Magno participate in a panel discussion at the DMAA conference in September, and she was equally candid at that time. Her commentary is in stark contrast to Medicare’s more typical stance of saying nothing and insisting that project awardees say practically nothing.
Has glasnost arrived at Medicare?
Vince,
I agree about the silence regarding CMS and disease management. What I find even more interesting however is the context in which her comments we made - a conference on Patient-Centered Medical Home, aka primary care gate keeping.
I sure hope that the proponents of medical care home get together with the patient safety folks at AHRQ, etc. According to the patient quality and safety side, we Americans (both adult and pediatric) are lucky if we get 50% of what is considered appropriate care from our physicians. According to the Medical Home folks (and CMS?) our primary care physicians are the one’s best suited to provide for and coordinate our medical needs. What am I missing?