Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
There are a few sub-questions we need to break down to answer before answering this one larger question. These sub-questions include: Is nursing staff turnover at nursing homes a big problem? Is nursing staff turnover correlated with quality of care? Does using nursing staff turnover as a quality metric provide the right incentives? A paper…
This weekend, my fire alarms kept going off. I called the local fire department who came out and they checked everything out. They arrived quickly, were extremely friendly and explained everything clearly. The did some tests and said all was well. If I were asked to rate their quality, I would rate them very high.…
The Oncology Care Model is slated to end soon. Specifically, the last set of six-month episodes would initiate no later than December 31, 2020 and thus all episodes will be completed in June 30, 2021. Nevertheless, CMS is proposing a successor to the Oncology Care Model called the Oncology Care First (OCF) Model. CMS describes…
Pharmacists are typically paid for dispensing drugs. They receive a fee to cover the price for acquiring a given drug and a dispensing fee. In general, however, pharmacists are not paid based on patient outcomes. Will that change? Troy Trygstad (2020) argues that value-based reimbursement for pharmacists through accountable pharmacy organizations (APOs) may be the…
Academic health centers often have a glowing reputation among clinicians and the general public of being the best of the best. In many cases, simple analysis of the numbers does not seem to back this assertion up. Part of the reason is selection bias. Academic and community health centers do not treat the same types…
Goitein (2020) argues that Clinician-Directed Performance Improvement is the best way to improve quality. I agree. This approach empowers physicians and other health care professionals to identify areas for improvement and work on those. Clinician Directed Performance Improvement (CDPI)…had its origins in 2013, when a group of physicians requested support for a physician-led quality program…
A number of studies (e.g., Wasfy et al. 2017, Desai et al. 2016) have found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) reduce hospital readmissions. However, are these findings valid? A recent paper by Ody et al. (2019) argues maybe not. Because readmission rates are risk-adjusted, changing coding…
The answer is ‘perhaps’ according to a new paper by Wadhera et al. (2018). They use data from 2005 to 2015, and apply an inverse probability–weighted 30-day and 45-day post-discharge mortality measure stratified by whether there was an associated readmission. They examine admissions for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia. Among Medicare beneficiaries, the HRRP…
CMS is increasingly moving to alternative payment models whereby providers are paid based on their ability to improve/maintain quality and hold the line on cost. A key question then, is how does CMS evaluate quality of care? Today, the Healthcare Economist will answer this question for the case of Medicare’s Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which…
A recent report from the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP LAN) examines how providers are getting paid in the U.S. today. Traditionally, health care providers (e.g., physicians, hospitals) were paid via fee-for-service (FFS). Fee-for-service means that every time a provider does a service, they get paid. This is truly largely regardless of…