HIMSS18: Care Management and Engagement

Overall, the Chillmark Team was pleased to see progress on telehealth, as well as a broader understanding that healthcare organizations (HCOs) will get patient engagement right only when they assemble a comprehensive collaborative health record (CHR). On the other hand, they were disappointed in slow progress toward addressing two prominent public health issues — the opioid crisis and behavioral health — as we didn’t see many large-scale use cases for engagement in general or episodic payments in particular.

Care Coordination Key to Low Readmission Rates by Geriatricians

New research provides further evidence that enhanced care coordination can make a difference in lowering hospital readmission rates. The study, published in the American Journal of Accountable Care, considered the types of admitting physicians and found geriatricians have the lowest 30-day readmission rates for conditions that carry value-based penalties under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.

New Law Broadens Chronic Care Through Medicare

Older adults with a lot of medical issues will see some of their burdens eased through a new law passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump. The Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic (CHRONIC) Care Act of 2018 won broad bipartisan support.

CMS Plans MACRA Changes to Improve Flexibility, Lessen Burden

CMS is looking to overhaul MACRA and remove reporting barriers for quality measures, according to the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Dr. Kate Goodrich, director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality, said the agency is reviewing all quality measures under MACRA to determine if there are ways to “automatically extract required quality data from electronic records” that will relieve physicians needing to report such data.

Reducing Unnecessary Hip and Knee Replacements Could Save Billions a Year

In 2014, Medicare paid an average of $17,223 and $16,292, respectively, for hip and knee replacements, according to the JAMA article. If those procedures cost the average Medicare rate of $13,000, the U.S. healthcare system would save $4.4 billion.