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Medicare Embraces the ‘Ounce of Prevention’ Philosophy

March 23, 2016
5:20 pm

We’ve long maintained that Medicare can be a stronger program, both in terms of protecting the health of its beneficiaries and in improved cost-efficiency, if it did a better job emphasizing prevention, diagnosis and early treatment, emulating many of the lessons being demonstrated every day in the private sector.

To the credit of HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, the Medicare program is now moving in this direction in a very significant way.

Today, Secretary Burwell announced that the Obama Administration will propose new rules this summer that would have Medicare provide coverage for diabetes prevention programs.  She cited a YMCA program that has enabled participants to cut their body weight by an average five percent, thus reducing the propensity for diabetes, a disease with extremely high incidence rates among the elderly.  Early interventions can prevent the need for more expensive healthcare services to treat diabetes symptoms, thus reducing Medicare expenditures.

HLC has long argued that Medicare should pay for services such as health coaching, aiding beneficiaries in practicing better dietary and exercise habits, as well as new technological innovations to help those with diabetes and prediabetes better monitor their health conditions.  We, in fact, sponsored a briefing for congressional staffers on the subject last year.

Secretary Burwell’s announcement today heralded an important new direction for the Medicare program.  In her words, the federal government is transitioning from “treating the sick to preventing the illness.”   We applaud her actions.

The Proliferation of Progress Generated by Medicare Advantage

December 11, 2015
3:20 pm

This week the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, representing plans that serve over four million individuals in Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans, hosted a congressional briefing to discuss innovations in Medicare Advantage.    Experts shared abundant evidence that Medicare Advantage plans have risen above and beyond traditional Medicare in providing quality healthcare that is cost-effective.

Several case studies were presented that highlighted continuing improvements being made to improve senior health:

  • Care at Home, a service launched by BCBS of Western New York and Landmark Health, offers a team that does not replace the primary care physician, but rather collaborates with the doctors and stays apprised on how patients are faring in their own residences.  Care at Home has enrolled 2,500 seniors since November 2014.  Patients with multiple chronic diseases generate more than seven times the healthcare costs of patients with only one chronic disease.  Medicare Advantage members who have six or more chronic diseases are eligible for Care at Home.  The coordinated care, which includes nurturing and education family caregivers, has, thus far, helped prevent 617 emergency room visits.
  • CareMore Health System, an Anthem company, uses doctors called extensivists to coordinate care for patients with chronic conditions.  They also ensure that there is proper follow up with patients and that protocols are adhered to by all involved in the patients’ care.  Predictive modeling is utilized to determine risk and practice early intervention, helping to keep costs low.  An average day at CareMore includes visits to homes for social and behavioral support, reading results from monitors in patients’ homes, following up after discharge, and providing rides for patients who have no form of transportation to reach points of care.
  • BCBS of Rhode Island identified pharmaceutical management as a way to lower healthcare costs and improve health outcomes.  The patient- centered pharmacy program serves members with multiple chronic conditions who take at least four medications and spend over $3,000 on drugs.  The medication therapy management includes comprehensive medication reviews, prescriber consultations, counseling for adherence and education, and monitoring to ensure good adherence habits are established.  In just the first three quarters of 2015, 8,632 members were served with an estimated savings of $2.8 million.

These are just a few examples demonstrating how innovation in Medicare Advantage has protected patients from high out-of-pocket costs, maintained quality care, and kept consumer satisfaction levels high.  These individual successes, and the others like them, need to be kept in mind by policymakers when they debate future support for the Medicare Advantage program.  The best practices and outcomes achieved by these pioneers in healthcare should be shared and encouraged so they can be replicated across the country.

The Exciting Movement Toward “Person-Centered Care”

May 20, 2015
11:46 am

American healthcare is evolving in ways that are both beneficial and necessary.  With an imperative to move toward a healthcare system that offers both high quality and cost-efficiency, the answer lies in finding better ways to keep people healthy.

In an interview with Hospital and Health Networks magazine, Ascension CEO Tony Tersigni (Ascension is the nation’s largest nonprofit healthcare system and a member of the Healthcare Leadership Council) explains how his organization is transitioning from “patient-centered care” to “person-centered care.”

This is one of the most enlightening quotes from the interview – “And so we see ourselves moving from physician-centered to person-centered, from transactional and episodic care to managed care by a team over time, from the idea of sick care to well-being.  We’re moving from care that’s inaccessible and tied to bricks and mortar to care that’s going to be convenient and available 24/7/365.”

Here is the full text of the Tersigni interview.

What is this idea of person-centered care at Ascension?

TERSIGNI: We view person-centered care as our sacred promise to support individuals’ lifelong health and well-being through holistic care. It’s something that goes back to our roots. We have a 200-year legacy of caring for the whole person — body, mind and spirit. We recognize that each person represents a unique individual biologically, psychologically and sociologically. We believe, as care develops in the future, it’s going to become much more personalized than it has been in the past. Bottom line, the emphasis on person-centered care is our way of demonstrating the commitment that our founders have had for the last 200 years.

Why is this driving the conversation at your organization?

TERSIGNI: It is our strategic direction. I might say we’ve been on this path since 2002. At that time, we created our “call to action.” It is pretty basic and simple: We are going to promise the communities that we serve health care that works, health care that’s safe and health care that leaves no one behind. Then we figured that, in order for us to do it, we needed to have four different foundational blocks. One is hired people — the people who serve those we’re privileged to serve. The second is developing trusted partnerships along the continuum. Empower knowledge, which is much more relevant today than it was in 2002. And then having this vital presence everywhere around the community.

That’s basically been the foundation of what Ascension has been. As we look at other industries, individuals have choices and options in every aspect of their daily lives, and we know that access to more and timely information really increases their options. That’s really what we’re trying to bring to Ascension and health care, and that’s how we’ve refined that focus over time.

Is “patient” not encompassing enough?

TERSIGNI: Actually, you hit the nail right on the head. We chose person-centered care because, again, it’s really focused on the person and, in many cases, they’re not patients, especially if we speak about health education and wellness. We typically don’t think of them as patients, but really as consumers. While other systems are caring for patients, we make a conscious effort to talk about providing person-centered care that’s focused on persons not on patients.

Is that difficult in such a provider-centered industry?

TERSIGNI: We’re challenging ourselves to move into health care transformation, and we believe that the first phase is seeing person-centered care. What I mean by that is we’re seeing health services being redesigned around the person, helping individuals to become participants in managing their own lives. We’re seeing care teams becoming more multidisplinary and we envision they’ll ultimately include professionals like nutritionists, social workers, coaches and partners for health. We also see that the economic model will become population based and will reward value. We’re seeing that now. And so we see ourselves moving from physician-centered to person-centered, from transactional and episodic care to managed care by a team over time, from the idea of sick care to well-being. We’re moving from care that’s inaccessible and tied to bricks and mortar to care that’s going to be convenient and available 24/7/365. There’s a lot of transformation that we believe has come and is coming to our health care industry. We want to be on that bandwagon as we move forward, because we need to move toward evidence-based standards and away from what we’ve seen in our industry is a lot of unwarranted variation. It’s a monumental transformation.

How will being person-centered help in the shift to value?

TERSIGNI: We believe we need to bring health care and health services closer to the home. We need to bring information to the persons we serve on mobile devices they use in their daily lives. Last year, if you look at [Ascension’s] total $21 billion in revenue, 51 percent of that came from non-acute care services. While people see us as a large hospital system, which we are, we’re a lot more than that. We’ve recognized that the health care landscape is changing and there are opportunities for us. So what we’ve been doing along the way is really identifying the continuum of care, the partners that we need across the continuum, and looking at the longitudinal care that we’re going to provide under population health management.

Why is clinical integration key to person-centered care?

TERSIGNI: We believe that, through clinically integrated systems of care, we can enable quality improvements and increase cost-effectiveness. That’s basically what clinically integrated systems of care are. It says that we are going to use the resources within the community to raise the quality of care of the community, and, in many cases, it’s going to be partnering with others. That’s why, when I first stated our call to action, one of the foundational components is trusted partners. We know we can’t do it alone and so we’re going to need partners along that full continuum.

What do people want from person-centered care?

Tersigni: We’ve done a lot of focus groups over the last few years as we’ve refined our strategic direction, and they revealed four different areas. They want us to respect them, they want us to include them, they want us to connect them, and they want us to engage them. They say: Respect me. Those who care for me know me, understand what’s important to me and treat me with respect and communicate in a way that I can understand. They say: Include me. Those who care for me actually are listening to me, include my family and others I trust in my care, and work as a team in providing care that’s holistic — body, mind and spirit. I want to be connected to reliable health information that’s relevant to me and networks of people like me. People with chronic diseases want to be socially connected with other people who have those same chronic diseases so they can have a social dialogue in terms of what’s happening in their lives. The last piece is: Engage me. I engage in the decision-making with my trusted partners. Those are the four goals that we’ve been trying to achieve in the voice of the customer. It’s really all about creating a healthier community.

What is Ascension’s eventual destination point?

Tersigni: Our destination point is to develop the capabilities to take care of millions of lives from birth to death. That’s what person-centered care is all about; that’s what our call to action was when we created it; and that’s where our growth is focused. The bottom line for me is, while we’ve made great strides in accomplishing our call to action, our job is not done. We still have more to do in promising the communities we serve health care that works, health care that’s safe and health care that leaves no one behind.

Medicine, Exercise and the Importance of Patient Adherence

July 18, 2014
12:41 pm

(This month, the Healthcare Leadership Council sponsored a Capitol Hill briefing on the importance of patient adherence in improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare.  The briefing featured expert perspectives from inVentiv Health, Novartis, SCAN Health Plan and Walgreens.  We were pleased to see commentary about this briefing on the “Be Active Your Way” blog sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health promotion.  The blog post is reprinted below.)

On Monday, July 14th, the Healthcare Leadership Council hosted an excellent briefing on non-adherence to medication, highlighting the fact that 1 out of 3 patients never fill their prescriptions, and nearly 3 out of 4 Americans don’t take their medications as directed.

The panelists discussed innovative strategies for improving adherence, such as targeted and timely communication. Each strategy was based on the reality that a one-size-fits-all approach to communication is both inefficient and ineffective. Clearly, the digital age is creating medical providers with new opportunities for engaging patients and tracking their adherence, but there are no simple solutions for getting folks to take their medicine.

The problem of non-adherence to medication raises an uncomfortable question for physical activity advocates.

If 1/3 of patients are signaling that a visit to the pharmacy is a barrier too high to overcome, and 75% are finding it too difficult to take medication properly, how many patients can we reasonably expect to fill an exercise prescription that typically requires 150 minutes/week of exertion?

Although evidence suggests that patients are more likely to exercise if their doctors prescribe exercise, we suspect very few patients will stick to an exercise program unless medical offices and physical activity providers (e.g. health clubs, personal trainers, community centers) adopt engagement strategies similar to those being implemented by the pharmaceutical industry for medication adherence.

At Novartis, for example, a comprehensive study of patients revealed 4 clusters of patients, each with a distinct set of compliance barriers: “Strugglers,” who seem overwhelmed by the medical condition and necessary medications; “Skeptics,” who view medication as a last resort; “A-Students,” who are fully engaged with their health care and likely to adhere to their prescription; and “Independents” who are likely to adhere but not be consumed with their health issues.

Understanding the four clusters helps Novartis create targeted adherence plans for each patient. The plans include customized messaging, 6 months of support, 3 or 4 email and text messages per week, an interactive website, real-time messaging support, and more.

Can this level of engagement be accomplished by a fitness center? Absolutely. And I know there are some pioneering clubs already on this path and achieving great results. But effective engagement does not happen overnight. It clearly requires an investment of time and resources, both of which are in short supply at most fitness centers.

So let’s make sure we support the great work of the Exercise Is Medicine initiative and champions of the “exercise prescription” movement like Dr. Eddie Phillips and Dr. Bob Sallis, by making sure that fitness facilities are prepared to help patients adhere to those prescriptions.

What do others think? How can we help patients adhere to exercise prescriptions? Do you work at a fitness center with a great member orientation program? Perhaps you work for a software company developing tracking systems for medical fitness providers? We’d love to hear from you.

Our Veterans Deserve Better

January 31, 2014
1:45 pm

Last year, the book “Best Care Anywhere:  Why VA Health Care Would Work Better for Everyone” entered its third printing.  The book tells of a Veterans Administration healthcare system that, according to the author, is far superior to the private sector in both quality care delivery and cost containment.  The message delivered in this book, in fact, became something of a core liberal talking point during health reform debates – that the wonders of single-payer, government-run healthcare can be seen on full display at the VA.

This week, CNN is painting a different picture of the VA system, reporting that at least 19 veterans have died as a result of delays in receiving routine diagnostic exams such as colonoscopies and endoscopies.  This follows an earlier CNN report that as many as 7,000 veterans in just two states alone – South Carolina and Georgia — are on a backlog list to receive these fundamental diagnostic screenings.

And, as the cable network points out, not a single person has been dismissed or demoted as a result of this substandard care, and the VA is consistently ignoring congressional committee requests for explanations and accountability.  One has to agree with Rep. John Barrow (D-GA) who said, “We have a duty to make sure the veterans who serve get the best health care possible.  And it is very obvious that, for too long and for too many folks, that hasn’t happened.”

This is not to say that the VA doesn’t carry out some aspects of healthcare very well.  The institution has, for example, been among the early adopters in demonstrating the effective use and value of electronic medical records.

But in terms of the argument that all of American healthcare should emulate this type of bureaucratically-run system, it’s been made clear this week that several thousand service men and women have reason to disagree with that thesis.  For too many who have dedicated their lives to serving their country, the concept of getting the right care at the right time isn’t happening.  That’s simply unacceptable.