Just a few years ago, things were looking up for the American health care system. We were going to start finding better ways to pay for care: call it pay-for-performance (P4P), value-based purchasing (VBP), or similar terms. We were going to nudge -- or, rather, push -- providers into more clinically integrated systems (e.g., ACOs) to help improve outcomes and to control costs. And, of course, with wider use of electronic health records (EHR), we'd be able to better coordinate care and make decisions based on actual data. It all sounded very promising. Now, though -- what's that old expression about the leopard not being able to change its spots?...
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)
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A 40-Year 'Conspiracy' at the VA
Arthur Allen | Politico | March 19, 2017
Four decades ago, in 1977, a conspiracy began bubbling up from the basements of the vast network of hospitals belonging to the Veterans Administration. Across the country, software geeks and doctors were puzzling out how they could make medical care better with these new devices called personal computers. Working sometimes at night or in their spare time, they started to cobble together a system that helped doctors organize their prescriptions, their CAT scans and patient notes, and to share their experiences electronically to help improve care for veterans...
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ABILITY Network Achieves Cloud-Enabled Accreditation Program (CEAP) from EHNAC
Press Release |
ABILITY Network, Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) |
July 25, 2017
ABILITY Network, a leading information technology company, announced today it has achieved full accreditation with the Cloud-Enabled Accreditation Program (CEAP) from the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC). ABILITY is one of the first healthcare information technology companies to achieve this new designation. Developed by industry peers, CEAP is offered exclusively for the users of FedRAMP-certified Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) – regardless of the healthcare data exchange model the CSP supports...
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Amazon Digital Health Talent Grab: Box Exec Reportedly Joins Team
Chris Davies | Slash Gear | July 21, 2017
Amazon is quietly building up its digital health tech talent, reportedly poaching a healthcare exec from Box. The Seattle behemoth may be best known for its retail business, but in the background it has a growing footprint in all manner of health technology areas. This latest Amazon talent grab appears to be another move to shore up those...
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AVIA Names Andy Slavitt as Senior Advisor
Press Release |
AVIA |
May 10, 2017
AVIA, the nation's leading network for health systems seeking to innovate and transform, announced that Andy Slavitt will join as a Senior Advisor. Slavitt brings to AVIA over two decades of private and public sector leadership in healthcare and technology. Slavitt previously served as the Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Obama. There, he oversaw the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace...
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Can the Healthcare System Change Its Spots?
By Kim Bellard | February 7, 2017
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Can We Engage Private Pharmacies To Help Control Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis?
Judy Stone | Forbes | February 13, 2017
Antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases have long been high on my list of things to worry about, with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis vying for top honors. In 2015, 10.4 million people became ill with tuberculosis, and 1.8 million died, making TB one of the top causes of death globally. Six countries account for 60% of the cases: China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa. As I noted in a previous post, India is critically important to control of drug resistance as well as tuberculosis, as it has the highest TB burden, with 2.2 million infections annually, as well as the largest antibiotic consumption...
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Colorado’s Direct Primary Care Bill: A Better Way to Pay for Healthcare?
Kelsey Ray | The Colorado Independent | April 10, 2017
Coloradans frustrated with the high costs of primary healthcare, take heed: A bill to protect a lower-cost model heads today to the state House floor after passing committee in both chambers. Fed up with the administrative burdens of “fee-for-service” insurance billing, family doctors across the country increasingly are turning to a payment model called direct primary care, in which patients and their primary care physicians enter into payment agreements that eliminate the middleman of traditional insurance...
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Could There Be a Blockchain Solution to High Prescription Drug Prices?
Michael Scott | Bitcoin Magazine | March 28, 2017
Prescription drugs are one of the biggest contributors to soaring healthcare costs in the U.S. And for both individuals and families, particularly where multiple prescriptions are needed, drug expenses can quickly escalate to thousands of dollars. According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8 in 10 Americans would like the government to negotiate prices for those on Medicare. Additionally, Americans want limits set on the amount drug companies can charge for high-cost drugs, such as those to treat cancer...
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Crowdfunding for Healthcare
By Kim Bellard | March 30, 2017
Elizabeth Rosenthal's searing article about medical billing, adapted from her forthcoming book An American Illness, is well worth a read. Its topic of sophisticated medical billing/upcoding -- done by organizations ostensibly acting in the best interests of patients and often under the guise of a non-profit status -- is also worthy of a discussion itself. This is not that discussion. What jumped out to me (and to many others, on Twitter and elsewhere) was the following indictment: "In other countries, when patients recover from a terrifying brain bleed — or, for that matter, when they battle cancer, or heal from a serious accident, or face down any other life-threatening health condition — they are allowed to spend their days focusing on getting better"...
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Crowdfunding Health Innovation: Disruptive Companies And Funders Meet To Change Health Delivery
Nicole Fisher | Forbes Magazine | February 24, 2014
Two of the most significant pieces of legislation in decades, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, are poised to transform the entire spectrum of health care. The ACA regulates everything from health insurance requirements to tax collection.
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Fire, Aim, Ready: Will States Make the Right Investment in HIX IT?
Bobbie Wilbur | Government Health IT | November 8, 2011
Health insurance exchanges (HIX) are gaining national interest and are the hot topic in today’s healthcare landscape. Federal law requires each state to have a health insurance exchange plan in place by January 1, 2013 and a functioning HIX in place by January 1, 2014 that enables individuals and small businesses to buy health coverage. Read More »
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Halamka's Reflections on US Health IT Policy Trajectory
By John D. Halamka, MD | July 6, 2017
I’m in China this week, meeting with government, academia, and industry leaders in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, and Suzhou. The twelve hour time difference means that I can work a day in China, followed by a day in Boston. For the next 7 days, I’ll truly be living on both sides of the planet. I recently delivered this policy update about the key developments in healthcare IT policy and sentiment over the past 90 days. I’ve not written a specific summary of the recently released Quality Patient Program proposed rule which provides the detailed regulatory guidance for implementation of MACRA/MIPS, but here’s the excellent 26 page synopsis created by CMS which provides an overview of the 1058 page rule...
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Health Care's Crushing Lack Of Competition
Martin Gaynor, Farzad Mostashari and Paul Ginsburg | Forbes | June 28, 2017
No matter how it resolves, the fiercely partisan debate over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act will not solve America’s true health care crisis. Indeed, a key reason why expanding coverage is so hard is that health care services cost so much, making insurance premiums unaffordable to many. Driven by lack of competition, ever higher prices are being paid to hospitals, doctors and insurers without leading to better outcomes. It’s time to implement a competition policy for health care before Americans crumple under a system that is devouring family and government budgets...
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Healthcare: We Get What We Pay For
By Kim Bellard | July 19, 2017
Politico (Dan Diamond) had two great pieces last week -- one on how tax-exempt hospitals benefited from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) while cutting charity care, and the second on how the Cleveland Clinic has built an island of prosperity amidst an impoverished community. I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not. I wrote about the supposed community benefits of "non-profit" hospitals two years ago, and Politico's analysis suggests things are getting worse. They looked at the top seven hospitals, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, and found...
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HHS Seeks to Reorient Obamacare Innovation Center
Charles S. Clark | Government Executive | September 26, 2017
Even as the Trump administration works to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it is taking advantage of one of the 2010 law's provisions to advance its own take on health system innovation. Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Sept. 20 announced plans to redirect the six-year-old Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the Health and Human Services Department. Its mission is to test new approaches or models to pay for and deliver high-quality health care more efficiently...
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