- CMS official says agency rolling out MACRA improvements. CMS this year will implement several regulatory changes to MACRA, including a move to facilitate quality measure reporting for hospital physicians, according to Kate Goodrich, director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality and CMO for CMS. Specifically, the agency plans to align quality measures between hospital and physicians to ease the reporting requirements for doctors who want to use their hospital's performance on quality measures under MIPS. In addition, according to Goodrich, CMS aims to roll out more alternative payment models this year.
- Heart failure patients treated by geriatricians less likely to be readmitted, study finds. Patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pneumonia have lower 30-day readmission rates when admitted by a geriatrician compared with several other specialists, according to a study in the American Journal of Managed Care. According to the researchers, CHF, COPD, and pneumonia are all Medicare penalty diagnoses, meaning hospitals can be penalized under the Affordable Care Act's Hospital Readmission Reduction Program if their readmission rates for those conditions are too high. The researchers assessed the readmission rates for the conditions between January 2013 and December 2015 at Mount Auburn Hospital and found—among other findings—that geriatricians had the lowest readmission rate (11%), when compared with hospitalists (13.7%), cardiologists (18.5%), intensivists (17.4%), and primary care physicians (16.7%).
- Intermountain launches new company that aims to transform mental health care. To better integrate mental and primary health care, Intermountain Healthcare has launched Alluceo, a new, independent company that will leverage a digital communication platform to deliver team-based mental health care services. The new company's services and technologies are based on Intermountain's Mental Health Integration (MHI) program, which integrates mental and behavioral health care into primary care and relies on a team-based care model that engages the patient, family members, care managers, and primary and mental health care providers.
From Advisory Board:
- How one community's partnerships are transforming house and health care for the homeless. Join us on Wednesday, March 21, where you'll learn how the University of Vermont Medical Center developed sustainable partnerships with multiple community-based organizations to address their patients' unmet housing and health care needs.
- Get straight on MACRA. Join us on Tuesday, Mar. 27, to learn some common FAQs about MIPS, and how you can set a compliant path to Quality Payment Program success
- Major trends in the outpatient shift market for 2018. Join us on Thursday, March 29, where you'll learn the main outpatient shift trends impacting organizations, including services shifting outpatient and market characteristics signaling risk of shift.