News Clips
HCP LAN: (4/13) - The LAN announced it will launch a Primary Care/Population Health Action Collaborative (PC/PH AC). The goal of the Collaborative is to accelerate adoption of resilient, population-based APMs with prospective cash flows for primary care providers and to achieve more equitable outcomes in PC/PH APMs.
Managed Healthcare Executive: (4/12) - In this article, CEO and co-founder of LeadingReach Curtis Gattis discusses how health care organizations participating in risk-based contracting or value-based care models are facing major challenges with integrating, managing, and tracking care coordination and communication capabilities within provider networks. Identifying care coordination goals are critical for improving value-based processes, and the following four goals could help improve care coordination: digitize referral communication; redirect referrals to in-network providers; add specialists notes to the EHR; and check the status of patients.
Health Affairs: (4/12) - The majority of US metropolitan residents live in highly concentrated hospital markets, largely as a result of health care consolidation. COVID-19 has exacerbated this trend, putting pressure on independent physicians to consider both horizontal and vertical mergers and transition to an employed model. This blog reviews policy interventions to address hospital consolidation and outlines the history, challenges and promise of physician-owned hospitals, which are split between community hospitals and specialty surgical hospitals.
Health Affairs: (4/9) - Accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been a mechanism for moving the health care system toward value-based care, with ACO models in the Medicare program consistently achieving gross savings and improved quality. This blog makes the case for sustaining the value movement by calling on the Biden Administration to make the Next Generation ACO model a permanent option for providers and prioritize expansion and improvement when reviewing the model.
Forbes: (4/9) - In his new role, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is likely to focus on anti-competitive practices in the health care system given his track record with anti-trust and other issues during his time as California Attorney General. Becerra has previously addressed health care competition and antitrust matters when he oversaw the largest health care antitrust settlement in the history of the US with Sutter Health, and has pushed for regulatory reforms to address anti-competitive practices.
Revcycle Intelligence: (4/8) - According to a new report from Kaufman Hall, hospital merger and acquisition (M&A) activity decreased significantly in the first quarter of 2021 despite larger than average transaction sizes. Only 13 M&A deals were announced at the start of 2021, with the average selling size reaching $676 million.
Healthcare Exec Intelligence: (4/7) - This article gives an overview of CMS actions taken thus far in 2021, which include recouping accelerated, advance payments made to providers through COVID-19 Accelerated and Advance Payments, delaying a request for applications for the ACO Transformation Track of the CHART Model, and instructing the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) to withhold all claims with dates of service on or after April 1 due to an extension of the Medicare sequester.
MedCity News: (4/7) - President Biden has been laser-focused on expanding access to quality, affordable health care and reducing health disparities since taking office. As COVID-19 has highlighted the urgent need for a value-driven health care system, it presents a significant opportunity for the Biden Administration to focus on value-based care. The Administration could capitalize on technology breakthroughs and other reforms that expand access to care to advance the next generation of value-based care in advanced APMs and to create a more equitable, efficient health care system.
Wall Street Journal: (3/22) - Although hospitals are now required to make their prices for services public to comply with a new federal rule, a Wall Street Journal examination of 3,100 sites revealed that hundreds of hospitals have embedded code that has blocked this information from being searched. While the prices are often accessible other ways, the code keeps pages from appearing in searches, inhibiting patients ability to easily find the information they are looking for.
|