Thursday, January 24, 2019
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The House Committee on Oversight and Reform will conduct public hearings on prescription drug costs this month—and the result could be legislation to cut medicine costs. Both Democrats and President Donald Trump have identified it as a top priority, according to
USA Today
. The problem isn’t only drug costs: A 2018 study published in the
Annals of Pharmacotherapy
estimated the annual cost of drug-related morbidity and mortality resulting from nonoptimized medication therapy was $528.4 billion.
(
USA Today
;
Annals of Pharmacotherapy
)
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Providers often lack point-of-care access to patient health data, according to a recent report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s annual report to Congress. Adoption is high, with most Americans receiving health care services having their health data recorded electronically. Recording the data may be the easy part. “This information is not always accessible across systems and by all end users, such as patients, healthcare providers, and payers, in the market in productive ways.” (
EHR Intelligence
;
report
)
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Innovation & Transformation
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Five of North Carolina’s largest health systems agreed to participate in Blue Premier, a shared-risk value-based model from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. They are Cone Health, Wake Forest Baptist Health, UNC Health Care, WakeMed Health and Duke Health. BCBSNC says it wants to shift all its members to Blue Premier within five years.
(
Becker’s Hospital Review
;
Triad Business Journal
)
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This month’s Consumer Electronics Show featured all sorts of fancy health gadgets—many for “health problems that people didn’t realize needed solving,”
Kaiser Health News
reports. One new-fangled electronic toothbrush promises to cut brushing time from two minutes to 10 seconds. Then there’s a belt that will alert you to weight gain—much like a conventional belt, the article notes. It also counts your steps and monitors the time you‘ve spent sitting.
(
Kaiser Health News
)
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Researchers for
JAMA Network Open
linked money spent on doctors by pharmaceutical companies to the current opioid epidemic. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to link opioid marketing to a potential increase in prescription opioid overdose deaths, and how this looks different across counties and areas of the country,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, the study’s lead author and an addiction specialist at Boston Medical Center.
The occasional free meal doesn’t seem like much, but apply it to all doctors in the country, “that could add up to more people being prescribed opioids, and ultimately more people dying.”
(
Kaiser Health News
;
JAMA Open Network
)
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Roughly half (47 percent) of patients want online access to their health information to make better decisions for themselves and their loved ones, according to the results from Quest Diagnostics’ “Know Your Numbers” survey. They’ll need it, because few keep few numbers in their head. While 80 percent of Americans know their social media passwords, only 38 percent of respondents reported knowing their cholesterol, and 33 percent reported knowing their blood sugar levels. Moreover, the survey revealed that 40 percent of respondents either did not have or were unsure if they have access to their lab test results online.
(
HCA News
;
survey)
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Never mind
:
The Walmart/CVS deal is back on track. Days after Walmart pulled out of CVS Caremark’s network and engaged in a public spat, the companies announced a new deal to keep Walmart in CVS Caremark’s networks. The companies didn’t disclose terms, but they did confirm it covered multiple years.
(
The Wall Street Journal
)
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We trust nurses
:
Nurses, physicians and pharmacists are among the most trusted professions in America, according to a recent Gallup poll. Nurses have been in that top position for 17 consecutive years. The only time they have ever been out of the top spot was in 2001, when firefighters won that honor. (
Gallup
)
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This three-minute video from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy features Brenda, the primary caregiver for her 79-year-old mother, Irene. Irene has multiple chronic conditions, including COPD and congestive heart failure. Because of a totally avoidable series of medication errors, her mother ended up in the hospital multiple times. “All of that could have been prevented had there been one person solely focused on managing medications for mom in the primary care setting.” (
YouTube
)
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MarketVoices...quotes worth reading
“There hasn’t been a time when drug companies have gotten this much pushback from both sides of the political spectrum on their pricing practices,”—Larry Levitt, SVP of the Kaiser Family Foundation, as quoted by
USA Today.
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Editor
Sandy Mau
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H2R Minutes
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