Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Telehealth May Not Reduce Health Care Costs
Telehealth may increase rather than decrease health care costs, a new study has found. The study, performed by the Rand Corporation and based on a limited sampling of data from California, found that only 12 percent of telehealth doctor visits replaced office visits while the remaining 88 percent of telehealth encounters constituted new demand. The study focused on virtual visits for respiratory illnesses and found that the telehealth encounters often led to office visits and medical tests that increased annual spending on respiratory illnesses approximately $45 for each user. Learn [...]
But is the Innovation Working?
Driven by government payers, private payers, and business demands, health care providers are engaging in delivery system innovation to an unprecedented degree. But is that innovation achieving its objectives? How can providers tell? A new post on the Health Affairs Blog offers guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of delivery system innovation. Among other steps, it proposes identifying the target population the innovation seeks to serve; describing baseline performance; and documenting the components of the innovation. It also suggests how payers can be enlisted to help with this effort. Go here [...]
Key Ingredients for Health Care Innovation
What conditions and considerations are needed for innovation in health care? A new article on the Health Affairs Blog asks this very question. To see the answers, go here to see the article “Innovative Environments In Health Care: Where And How New Approaches To Care Are Succeeding.”
MACPAC Looks at High-Cost Hepatitis C Drugs
The emergence of exceptionally high-cost drugs that offer unprecedented benefits for Hepatitis C patients has posed a considerable challenge to state Medicaid programs: the drugs offer cures, not treatment, yet their costs are potentially budget-busting. The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission commissioned a study to evaluate how these new drugs and their cost have affected state Medicaid programs and the managed care organizations that serve most Medicaid beneficiaries. Among the issues the study considered were: state coverage and prior authorization policies the impact of the new drugs on [...]
MedPAC Discusses Post-Acute Payment Issues
At their public meeting last week, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission discussed two important issues involving how Medicare pays for post-acute-care services. First, MedPAC members suggested that implementation of a new, unified, site-neutral payment system for post-acute care, mandated by the 2014 Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act (IMPACT), could be completed well before the legislation’s target date of 2024. Commissioners discussed the possibility of Medicare introducing such a new system, perhaps by phasing it in over a period of years, beginning in 2021. MedPAC commissioners also discussed [...]