Value-Based Care

Just over half of the 114 organizations to join one of two Medicare accountable care organization efforts in 2012 report no decrease in health spending below targets during their first 12 months.

Heartland Regional Medical Center had more to lose than most when it gambled and joined Medicare's experiment with accountable care in 2012. For the first year at least, that risky bet paid off.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has launched a strategic initiative to define value in cancer care.

Peter B. Bach, MD, MAPP, director, Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, says accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes are trends driven by macro issues, which include decreased reimbursement to private practices and drug discounts from the 340B program.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recently aired concerns as to whether the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) can serve as a model for providing value-based care. In particular, several members asserted that the medical home model may have a real cost disadvantage for health systems. They explained that without evidence-based research, it is difficult to determine if the model encourages practices to use their cost savings to improve care.

As the quality and cost transparency movements gain support within the healthcare industry, a more important question persists: what will actually work for consumers?

Gary Liska, with Alere Home Monitoring Inc, says Alere's commitment to patients' safety is why they supported the STABLE study.

Figures from 2010 show that 71 Chicago-area hospitals covering seven counties discharged about 1.02 million patients; by 2012, that number had dropped about 5 percent, to 970,000 discharges, according to the January report.

As Congress tries to reform Medicare, the program's independent advisor has its own suggestions, including a call to end to what has become a revenue buffer for many hospitals and an integral part of their physician acquisition strategies.

This article reviews the mobile clinic sector's impact on access, quality, and costs, and explores postreform opportunities for leveraging them nationally.

After the disastrous rollout of the healthcare exchanges last October, Kathleen Sebelius has hit the road to pump up enrollment-and it just might be working.

Merck and the Heritage Provider Network forge a new kind of relationship, with the goals of spawning innovation in healthcare delivery and of providing an outline for future collaborations between ACOs and other healthcare stakeholders.

Health information technology is most useful at the point of care so why do so many emergency medical services (EMS) professionals lack access to patient health information where it is likely to prove so effective?

Sustaining and enhancing patient experience in this era of reform will require a combined macro policy-level and micro practice-level approach.

The authors discuss 4 tech-dependent innovations that will be major keys to the sustained success of ACOs.

Medicaid is a deeply flawed program in need of reform, but the hope that Arkansas will establish a pathway for such reform may be met with disappointment.

Currently, more than 600 accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been established throughout the United States. However, a recent study finds that more than half of physician groups remain hesitant to join an ACO.

Fox Chase Cancer Center's Crystal Denlinger, MD, presented Optimal Post-Treatment Surveillance: Is More Really Better?, addressing a topic that challenges not only patients and their physicians, but also payers as the nation moves toward a healthcare system defined by the maxim "better quality at a lower cost."

In his talk, Melanoma Guideline Update: New Agents and Opportunities for Treatment, John A. Thompson, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, first showed the preferred list of treatments for advanced or metastatic melanoma: ipilimumab, vemurafenib, dabrafenib, dabrafenib plus trametinib, high-dose interleukin-2, and the drugs-to-come in the category: clinical trials.

Who should receive genetic counseling and screening for colorectal cancer (CRC)? And how early should annual colonoscopies happen once those at risk are identified? These are important questions with equally important and complex answers.

Life-saving therapies that halt cancer can take a toll on the skeletal system, leaving survivors with bone loss or more serious injuries such as broken wrists, ribs, or hips. Watchful attention, screening, and therapy are needed to prevent these outcomes.

Members of the Health IT Policy Committee approved a set of recommendations Tuesday that will bring meaningful use Stage 3 requirements one step closer to federal approval and scale back the initial Stage 3 proposals by 33%.

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) and other population health initiatives cannot succeed without health information being able to flow between healthcare organizations and providers.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance, under increasing pressure to demonstrate the value of its recognition programs, previewed new patient-centered medical home standards intended to put more emphasis on team-based care, integrating behavioral health and sustaining practice transformation.