News Clips
Healthcare Dive: (3/1) – HHS has received 299 claims of information blocking since April last year, when sweeping interoperability regulations came into effect, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) said. The majority — 211 — have been filed against healthcare providers, while 46 allege information blocking specifically by a health IT developer. It's unclear what percentage of the claims are substantiated, though ONC has sent all 274 possible claims to HHS' Office of the Inspector General for investigation.
Health Affairs: (3/1) – Value in health care is a potent rallying call. But value for whom? How do we know when we have it? With the term “value” used so freely, it has lost any shared understanding of its definition. This presents a critical obstacle to pursuit of value-based health care systems—perhaps the hardest such obstacle to resolve. This Forefront article explores value through the lens of patient well-being.
Healthcare Dive: (2/28) – Nearly two years after the pandemic began, inpatient volumes, especially for surgeries, appear to still be struggling, leading for-profit operators to double down on expanding outpatient and ambulatory service lines while focusing on geographies expected to see high population growth.
Modern Healthcare: (2/27) – Insurance companies are seeing significantly higher anesthesia bills from private equity-backed physician management companies than from practitioners who keep their staffing and management services in house, according to a study published in JAMA. Researchers found physician management companies with private equity funding charged over 16.5 percent higher prices than those without.
Fierce Healthcare: (2/27) – Providers say they dodged a bullet when the Biden administration decided to redesign the Direct Contracting Model instead of eliminating it entirely as progressive lawmakers and groups demanded. However, it remains unclear whether the redesigned model set to launch next year will quell criticisms from progressives that the model will lead to the privatization of traditional Medicare.
AJMC: (2/24) – CMS said it is redesigning its accountable care organization (ACO) model away from its Global and Professional Direct Contracting (GPDC) model into one that focuses on health equity. In addition, CMS is canceling the Geographic Direct Contracting Model, which was announced in December 2020 by the Trump administration but was paused in March 2021.
Business Insider: (2/24) – A group of prominent healthcare officials from the Obama administration have rushed to defend the Global and Professional Direct Contracting Program. They said it builds on the Affordable Care Act and a decade of Medicare tests and aims to fix problems with traditional Medicare like fragmented services and duplicate tests.
HealthcareExecIntelligence: (2/24) – Nearly two-thirds of providers see value-based care as a way to improve relationships with patients and enhance care management strategies. Currently, chronic diseases are the most severe threat to health in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that chronic and mental health conditions are responsible for 90 percent of the country’s annual healthcare expenditures.
Healthcare Dive: (2/24) – Lifespan and Care New England, Rhode Island's two largest health systems, are scrapping plans to merge after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal, along with the state's attorney general. Both health system boards decided "not to pursue litigation," according to a joint statement released Wednesday.
Commonwealth Fund: (2/23) – The article authors argue that policymakers should consider ways to bolster the U.S. primary care system to ensure it is prepared for future emergencies and equipped to handle the long-term impacts of COVID-19. Experts are increasingly coalescing around a core set of policy reforms to strengthen primary care, including reforming how we pay and how much we pay for primary care, ensuring telehealth flexibilities last beyond the public health emergency, and increasing investments to build the primary care workforce.
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