State evaluations of Medicaid demonstration projects under the Section 1115 waiver program suffer from poor evaluation and results reporting, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Although the report says good work is going forward in some states, others take up to seven years to file evaluation reports, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fails to make reports public fast enough. (
Benefits Pro;
GAO report)
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US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar defended the administration’s move to extend availability of short-term health insurance from three to 12 months this week. Noting that health premiums have increased more than 100 percent since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, Azar says consumers who want to keep coverage, especially when changing to a new job, too often must sacrifice too much to afford it. Noting that the plans are not for everyone—they don’t cover the ACA’s minimum plan requirements—Azar says making short-term coverage an option will enhance competition in the market. (
CNN)
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Innovation & Transformation
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Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind has partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs on a project to identify risk factors for hospital patient deterioration. Using machine learning, the project will sift through a de-identified patient data set comprised of 700,000 health records. It’s hoped the project will determine how to detect and prevent risks before the patient shows serious signs of illness. (
MobiHealthNews)
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Medical-device maker Medtronic is taking value-based health care to the next level with a new promise: If the product doesn’t work, we’ll return your money. The company has value-based reimbursement contracts with hospitals for a product used with cardiac implants; it also inked a deal with Aetna to tie a portion of reimbursement to how well its insulin pumps perform in patients. CEO Omar Ishrak says risk-based contracts will play a greater role for med-tech companies in the future. (
The Wall-Street Journal—subscription required)
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The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream offers a behind-the-scenes look at how public and private employers and unions across the U.S. are reducing their spending by 20 percent or more while improving care quality and access. The book uses real-life examples to outline how top-performing benefits purchasers take control of the purchasing process, align economic incentives and apply simple, practical and proven approaches. The new edition also unpacks how employers have been the key (unwitting) enabler of the opioid crisis and how smart employers are going upstream to solve the opioid problem before it happens. Now available to H2RMinutes subscribers as a free download
here.
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While opioid overuse commands headlines, a second life-threatening drug is also overprescribed. Overdose deaths from benzodiazepines nearly tripled in the last decade. The psychotropic drugs, used to treat everything from anxiety to restless leg syndrome, are commonly co-prescribed with opioids—often with deadly results. In this Perspective piece, the authors caution against focusing too much on opioids while ignoring the risk of prescribing benzodiazepines and urge medical education on the dangerous trend in overuse, misuse and addiction to them. (
New England Journal of Medicine)
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DNA-based diets—personalized regimens based on your genetic makeup—are the new diet fad, charging clients hundreds of dollars for each plan. But researchers found no correlation between DNA and weight loss among two patient groups—one on a low-fat diet and the other on a low-carb one. Genetic science can offer probabilities, but for now, it can’t produce a prescriptive weight-loss plan. (
Futurism)
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PlateJoy launches pre-diabetes meal app: Meal-planning company PlateJoy launched a pre-diabetes service that uses customer preferences and a program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create menus (and meals) for those at risk for diabetes. Some health plans-—as well as big employers like Express Scripts, Dignity Health and Kroger-—are signing on to cover the $600 annual cost per person for the program. (
CNBC)
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FDA recognizes app as a diagnostic: Cognoa’s pediatric behavioral health app received FDA recognition as a Class 2 diagnostic medical device for autism. Its machine-learning capabilities can assess and identify autism among children as young as 18 months. Cognoa can now request full FDA clearance—paving the way for its use as an insurance-covered technology. (
TechCrunch;
MobiHealthNews)
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In this one-hour interview, Richard Baron, MD, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, former leader of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation Center and health care thought leader, speaks to innovation and leadership among physicians and the challenge to infuse humanity, humility, meaning and purpose into the practice of medicine—all in the context of a more institutionalized, complex health care system. (
ShoutEngine)
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MarketVoices...quotes worth reading
"Payment, as it's structured, winds up institutionalizing many of the values that the medical profession itself holds dear. So it's very common that procedures and treatments that involve lots of technology
—especially new technology—wind up being paid much more generously than procedures that don't involve technology....I think there's a deeper lesson in that, which is: We all kind of believe in—worship—the wonders of technology and the new machines and the ways they all help us take better care of patients, and the payment system reflects that. It embed those values. It's not accidental that those kinds of things are reimbursed more, and I think they're reimbursed more because, on some fundamental level, in our love affair with science, we believe that the more technological or the more scientific it is, the better it must be.
" Richard Baron, MD, as quoted in a (
ShoutEngine
) podcast.
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Sandy Mau
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