The final evaluation is in: the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation’s Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative, tested between 2012-2016, found limited success. There were no significant differences between spending growth or claims-based quality-of-care measures for diabetes patients between the CPC participants and comparison practices. While the model showed improvement on tests of patient access to care, care coordination and better management of high-risk patients, it didn’t save money overall—not even enough to cover the associated management fees paid to practices. (
Health Care Dive
;
Health Affairs
)
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A
Kaiser Health News
analysis shows brand-name drug manufacturers who refused to let generic drug makers buy samples for development use also significantly raised their Medicare prices over the years. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration posted an online list of complaints against pharmaceutical companies alleged to have delayed generic drug development. Between 2012 and 2016, Novartis raised the price of its Exjade drug 54 percent; Actelion raised its price on Tracleer by 52 percent. (
Kaiser Health News
)
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Innovation & Transformation
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Organizations that connect patients to needed social services may realize savings, according to new research. Compared to a control group, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage members in a WellCare pilot that met at least one unmet social need—such as housing, transportation or health food—saw an additional 10 percent reduction in health care costs per person. (
Healthcare Finance
)
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Health care may be an ideal area to test America’s acceptance of applications in machine learning and artificial intelligence applications, simply because it’s highly regulated and protective of personal information. In any case, it’s already in play in health care, from Apple watch bands that are gathering heart rhythm data to a brain implant that uses machine learning algorithms to stop a seizure.
(
The Wall Street Journal
[subscription may be required])
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A recent Public Agenda study found that, despite political, social and economic differences, the top health care priority among Americans is affordability. Transparency and simplicity also ranked high. That’s enough common ground to begin forging policy, the report authors find. (
Becker’s CFO report
;
Where Americans see eye to eye on health care
).
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Reports of incidents in which Amazon’s Echo digital assistant recorded a family conversation and then sent the recording to a random cell phone contact has sparked questions about how it could be accidentally used to record and save—and perhaps accidentally share—personal health information. Amazon makes a list of recordings available for users to delete, but industry watchers say Alexa isn’t secure enough for health care applications yet. (
Healthcare Analytics News
;
USA Today
;
how to delete Amazon Alexa recordings
)
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Layoffs at IBM Watson:
Insiders at IBM Watson Health say the division sent pick slips to between 50 and 70 percent of staff. Most of the layoffs are for employees in acquired companies, including Truven, Merge and Phytel. (
Modern Healthcare
)
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Know where your dollar goes:
America’s Health Insurance Plans released a handy graphic showing where commercial and individual health plans spend a dollar. Prescription drugs account for 23.3 cents for every dollar spent, followed by physician services at 22.2 cents. AHIP says just 2.3 percent the spend goes toward net profit for insurance companies. (
Healthcare Finance
)
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New faces for MEDPAC:
The Government Accountability Office appointed five new members to its Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, including former National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo, who now teaches and supports a combined public policy/public health effort at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas-Austin. Other new appointees: Marjorie Ginsburg, Center for Healthcare Decisions Inc.; John Jafferty, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; Jonathan Perlin, HCA Healthcare; and Jaewon Ryu, Geisinger Health System.
(
Health Payer Intelligence
)
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There’s a lot of talk about the price of prescription drugs, but tracking the different parties and what prices they set or pay—manufacturer price, average wholesale price, wholesale price, usual and customary price, insurance price, cash price, discount price—can be challenging. This visual parses the price jargon and offers insight into how the pricing game works (or, if you’re a consumer paying cash, often doesn’t work). (
GoodRx
)
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MarketVoices...quotes worth reading
“Like automating any human labor, introducing AI means automating a portion of a highly trained professional’s job. And that professional will want to make sure that what you’re doing to automate their job adheres to the highest ethical standard before adopting it—so the stakes are high.” Robert Mittendorff, physician and venture capitalist, as quoted by
The Wall Street Journal
.
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Editor
Sandy Mau
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