Insurance

The call for value-based care is propelled by the shortage of family physicians and the disparity connection between the time it takes to care for the sickest patients and what Medicare and Medicaid pay. A study in this month's issue of The American Journal of Managed Care tracks just how bad things are, by looking at a normal day in a family practice.

Authors in the New England Journal of Medicine discuss the prospects and pitfalls of implementing a new CMS fee for physicians who coordinate care for Medicare patients with multiple chronic conditions.

Amid last week's news that CMS had miscalculated the number of enrollees under the Affordable Care Act was a quieter announcement that the agency had appointed a chief data office to improve transparency, among other tasks.

Greater geographic variation was found among private than public payers in the inpatient price per discharge for most hospital services.

In an effort to foster greater transparency of healthcare costs, the government and private sector entities are offering tools that provide cost and quality information to consumers. But just how effective are these tools?

Medicare Advantage enrollment decreases with lower rebates for supplemental benefits. Upcoming ACA reforms are predicted to reduce MA enrollment where traditional Medicare costs are low.

In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, medical oncologists have delineated their recommendations to improve cancer care and provide better access to quality care for those patients with financial issues and on Medicaid.

Peter Yu, MD, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, (ASCO) discussed the organization's efforts throughout 2014 to reform reimbursement and take on issues of value and quality in cancer care during Patient-Centered Oncology Care, the annual gathering sponsored by The American Journal of Managed Care.

Diabetes advocates are pressing for a bill that would compel Medicare to cover CGM technology. They cite a study in The American Journal of Managed Care, which found it costs $17,564 every time a person with diabetes goes to the emergency department with hypoglycemia.

This study examines patterns of high-risk prescribing in the elderly Medicare Advantage population and demonstrates that the practice varies widely by geography and drug class.

Hospice care for Medicare patients resulted in lower hospitalization rates and lower healthcare expenditures during the last year of life, according to a study published the November 12 issue of JAMA.

Next month, state health officials will launch a transition of rural Medi-Cal beneficiaries into Medi-Cal managed care health plans. The transition involves about 20,000 of the most frail and elderly segment of the rural Medi-Cal population.

CMS announced today that low-dose computed tomography screening will now be reimbursed once a year by Medicare as a preventive service benefit, despite an advisory panel recommending against the screening back in April 2014.

The efficacy of oral antivirals for hepatitis C infection is a moot point. The prevailing discussion now delves into the best combinations that can target different viral genotypes, access to these combination regimens, and the subsequent dent in the budget of the patient, the health plan, or the care provider-as the case may be.

Medicare costs, Department of Veterans Affairs budgetary costs, and the economic impact on the developing world-these were some of the topics discussed at the evening session, Health Economics and Cost-Effectiveness, on the third day at The Liver Meeting 2014, held in Boston, Massachusetts, November 7 to 11, 2014.

The study results from the National Lung Screening Trial found cost-effectiveness and value of screening long-term smokers when screened by trained professionals.