About the public’s health
Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health (2019): This comprehensive document was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The committee of authors formulated “five goals whose accomplishment will result in better integration of social care into health care, which may in turn result in improved health and reduced health disparities. Those goals are to
1. Design health care delivery to integrate social care into health care, guided by the five health care system activities—awareness, adjustment, assistance, alignment, and advocacy.
2. Build a workforce to integrate social care into health care delivery.
3. Develop a digital infrastructure that is interoperable between health care and social care organizations.
4. Finance the integration of health care and social care.
5. Fund, conduct, and translate research and evaluation on the effectiveness and implementation of social care practices in health care settings.”
About healthcare IT
California Enacts Telehealth Payment Parity, Boosts Asynchronous Care: One of the impediments to the spread of telemedicine has been a business model for payment for those services. California now joins about a dozen other states that mandate payers reimburse healthcare providers for telehealth services “on the same basis and to the same extent” as they cover in-person services.
FDA post-market surveillance system enters next phase: “Sentinal” is a national system that uses electronic healthcare data to monitor the safety of FDA-regulated drugs and medical products. Since 2009 it has been operated by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, which developed the program.
“Under a five-year contract worth $220 million, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute will continue to run the Sentinel Operations Center and to create two new coordinating centers—the Sentinel Innovation Center and the Community Building and Outreach Center—to better leverage clinical data for detecting potential safety problems…
The Community Building and Outreach Center, led by Deloitte Consulting, will focus on communication and collaboration, as well as deepening stakeholder involvement and broadening awareness, access, and use of Sentinel tools and data infrastructure…
Vanderbilt University Medical Center will co-lead the Sentinel Innovation Center with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Duke Clinical Research Institute and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute…”
The activities will center on new ways to “extract and structure information derived from EMRs.” Such techniques will include natural language processing, machine learning and safety signal detection
About medical devices
Million-dollar marketing juggernaut pushes 3D mammograms: This article is a great case study for a device that has yet to prove benefits but is being marketed as a superior product with a higher charge.
About health insurance
Obamacare is getting more affordable under the Trump administration: “In a marked shift from previous years, average premiums for mid-level ‘silver’ plans will decrease 4 percent for 2020, while the number of plans available on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces will swell 13 percent, according to figures released this morning by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Nearly 7 in 10 people will have access to at least three marketplace plans, up from six in 10 last year (the figures don't include the 11 states running their own marketplaces instead of relying on Healthcare.gov.)”
The Future of Medicare Program Integrity: By integrity, CMS administrator Verma means addressing fraud and abuse; in 2018, “improper payments” (including billing errors) accounted for 5% of the total $616.8 billion of Medicare's net costs. Yesterday afternoon she issued this statement that explains five measures CMS will be taking to address this problem:
Stopping bad actors.
Fraud prevention.
Tracking “new and emerging” risks.
Ease provider burdens.
Take advantage of new technology.