by Randy Williams, MD FACC, CEO of Pharos Innovations The results from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Tele-HF trial are in, and the findings are worth considering . The results are counter to most of the findings of other studies examining telemonitoring for heart failure and at face value are disappointing to us, and the [...]
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The American College of Physicians (ACP) just released a well-reasoned and thorough position paper, The Patient-Centered Medical Home Neighbor: The Interface of the Patient-Centered Medical Home with Specialty/Subspecialty Practices. As I’ve written before, the Big Idea behind ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) is the notion of accountability, not the specifics of organizational structure. The purpose of the ACP position [...]
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“Track who is on a care team — and share info with the patient.” That’s just one of the summary recommendations coming from expert testimony given in a recent public hearing on how to improve care coordination through the use of health information technology. The Meaningful Use workgroup and Quality Measures workgroups are now wrestling with how to translate this [...]
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Last week I attended and participated in an excellent conference — the National Reducing Hospital Readmissions Forum sponsored by World Research Group. One of my main take aways is to observe a simple — yet huge — difference in mindset between hospital executives and vendors. Over the past few months I’ve heard many vendors with diverse health care [...]
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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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Care management software is intended to help patients make critical connections across the health care delivery system. Today it’s used primarily by 3rd party care managers who are typically either employed directed or indirectly by payers. While not surprising, the state-of-the-art of care management software is that it continues to function as disconnected islands of information. The 2010 [...]
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The Care Continuum Alliance has mercifully and wisely rebranded it’s name and eliminated the initials “DMAA”. See its press release: Care Continuum Alliance Launches New Brand for Population Health Improvement. (As a reminder, DMAA originally stood for Disease Management Association of America.) I for one say “hurrah, and good riddance”. Where Did the Term “Disease Management” (DM) [...]
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Who has the most comprehensive data about YOUR clinical conditions? For most people, the answer today is “your health plan”, but it’s not at all clear that health plans will continue to have this role in the future. As physicians and hospitals adopt EHRs, it’s foreseeable that clinical data about patients will be far more [...]
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by Jaan Sidorov, MD and Vince Kuraitis The Medicare MAPCP (Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Practice) demo promised to be Medicare’s Biggest Change in 40 Years… …but the emerging reality isn’t living up to the promise. In this post, we’ll discuss: The Promise An Overview of the MAPCP Demo Our Main Takeaway: Emerging Reality Suggests Medicare [...]
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