e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

The Real Secret Sauce of Medicare’s Participation in Regional Collaboratives — Network Effects

Last week I asked whether Medicare’s Biggest Change in 40 Years is on the horizon. That post described and discussed implications of Medicare’s new direction for the medical home — the shelving of Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD) and the refocusing on the recently announced Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Initiative (MAPCI).
In that post I touched briefly on the [...]

Continue reading

 

Three Years Of Medical Home Demonstration Preparation Down the Drain?

Do you remember the scene in the movie Animal House where Bluto Blutarski laments “…seven years of college education down the drain?”
Why aren’t primary care physicians expressing similar laments about  the shelving of the MMHD (Medicare Medical Home Demonstration) in favor of the MAPCI (Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Initiative).
My colleague Jaan Sidorov, MD and I pick [...]

Continue reading

 

Medicare’s Biggest Change in 40 Years on the Horizon?

Earlier this week CMS issued a typically cryptic Announcement indicating that they were shelving the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD) and instead would focus on the recently announced Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Initiative (MAPCI). My blog post from Tuesday provides details and asks the question “What does all this mean?”
Today’s blog post will tackle:

Medicare’s biggest change [...]

Continue reading

 

CMS Shelves Medicare Medical Home Demonstration

I just received an email from CMS announcing the latest official word on the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD):
10/26/2009 – In Washington, the efforts to reform health care and health insurance include proposed legislative language that would have an impact on the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration as described in section 204 of the Tax Relief and [...]

Continue reading

 

Part II — The Medicare Medical Home Demonstration: Crawling Out From Under the Rock

In Part I of my guest post on The Collaborative Forum blog, I wrote that the Medicare Medical Home Demo is in BIG Trouble. Here’s a recap:

Political reality dictates that the MMHD must save costs.
As currently structured, the MMHD cannot achieve cost savings

In any given year, only a small percentage of patients account for the vast [...]

Continue reading

 

Medicare Medical Home Demo (MMHD) is in BIG Trouble

Between the time the MMHD was authorized in 2006 and now, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in Medicare care coordination programs. The MMHD is between a rock and a hard place — conflicted by two “must achieve” objectives that are diametrically opposed:

As a political matter, the MMHD must save [...]

Continue reading

 

Complimentary Issue — Medical Home News

Would you like to receive a complimentary issue of a new publication — Medical Home News ?  Click on the link and then on “Sample Issue” in the upper left corner.
Here’s a preview of the first issue:

Introducing Medical Home News
An Annotated Guide to the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD)
Subscriber’s Corner
Johns Hopkins Lipitz Center to Assist [...]

Continue reading

 

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 [...]

Continue reading

 

Finally! CMS Provides a Flood of Details About the Medicare Medical Home Demo

I’ve been critical in the past when CMS has been silent in explaining their thinking, so I’ll start this post by congratulating CMS on sharing a flood of details about the upcoming Medicare Medical Home Demonstration project.

An email from CMS arrived in my inbox this morning at 2 am.  That email notified me that they have [...]

Continue reading