April 29, 2021 | Can empathy for patients mitigate burnout?
INDUSTRY NEWS
Millenson to FDA: Make medical apps less risky
Loose regulatory policies have allowed thousands of consumer-facing apps to avoid oversight by claiming to be low risk, warns Michael L. Millenson in an opinion piece for STAT News. “With the pandemic accelerating our reliance on digital health, more urgent action is needed. ‘Innovation’ is not a fig leaf the FDA should be using to cover up its inattention to the evidence about ineffective and potentially injurious apps. Now is the time for Congress and senior policymakers to order regulators to ensure that all consumer-facing apps are reliable, not risky.” (STAT News)
For-profit hospitals provide more charity care
Nonprofit hospitals provided fewer free services than their government and for-profit counterparts, despite their tax-exempt status requiring charity care. According to research published in Health Affairs, nonprofit hospitals spent $2.30 of every $100 in total expenses on charity care, less than government ($4.10) and for-profit hospitals ($3.80). According to the researchers, the results “suggest that many government and nonprofit hospitals’ charity care provision was not aligned with their charity care obligations arising from their favorable tax treatment. Policy makers may consider initiatives to enhance hospitals’ charity care provision…” (Health Affairs; Modern Healthcare*)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
Health technology innovation and medication management reform
Medication management reform—specifically high-quality, patient-centered comprehensive medication management (CMM) services—requires technologic innovation, writes GTMRx Executive Director Katherine H. Capps. Without a proper health IT solution in place, CMM will be little more than a concept. The data help teams determine which patients have not achieved clinical goals of therapy or who are having medication therapy problems. It also allows them to analyze use patterns for all medications. (Specialty Pharmacy Continuum)
Data sharing: Technology’s not the problem; people are
The pandemic has encouraged more institutions to share health care data, but barriers remain, according to participants in an online event sponsored by the National Academy of Medicine. "What we probably knew even before the pandemic is that data sharing within and across sectors is really feasible, and it's not prohibited by technical issues -- it's probably prohibited more by issues of misaligned incentives and ethical, social, and legal issues, which we know are really challenging to work through,” said Nakela Cook, MD, MPH, executive director of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. (MedPage Today)
Using AI for risk stratification in primary care
Oak Street Health, a network of more than 80 primary care centers in medically underserved communities, has implemented a machine learning–based risk stratification tool that outperformed prior backward-looking approaches in identifying high-risk patients. Early feedback from Oak Street Health’s primary care providers and social workers suggests that the display of top risk factors based on model predictions created a broadly interpretable and actionable risk stratification tool in caring for the highest-risk patients. (NEJM Catalyst)
GTMRx releases tools for employers to navigate health plans and adopt CMM service
"Innovative health plans should be paying for comprehensive medication management services that leverage a clinical pharmacist working in collaborative practice with physicians if they are serious about managing costs, increasing quality and ensuring appropriate care," said Paul Grundy, MD, President of GTMRx. "We want to help employers realize their power in designing health plans that put medication optimization front and center." The Get the Medications Right™ (GTMRx) Institute released the GTMRx Employer Toolkit, designed to equip employers with the knowledge to manage their pharmacy and medical benefit programs effectively. (Yahoo! Finance)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Primary care to the vaccine rescue
Primary care physicians and providers in small offices and clinics will be crucial to ensuring everyone receives a COVID-19 vaccination, said state health officials during a briefing last week. The federal government will soon offer smaller packages of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that can be more readily used by individual PCPs. Although estimating the number of doses required will be difficult and likely involve some waste, it's important to be able to offer a vaccine in the office instead of having to refer someone elsewhere, says Ngozi Ezike, MD, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. (Medscape Medical News)
Use of direct-to-consumer telemedicine—on-demand virtual care for minor medical issues—may increase costs and utilization, according to an analysis published in Health Affairs. Patients who used telehealth for upper respiratory infections were more likely to receive more follow-up care than those who sought in-person care. Researchers found that the telemedicine cohort had fewer emergency department visits but more subsequent office, urgent care and telemedicine visits. “Our findings suggest that potential savings from shifting initial care to a direct-to-consumer telemedicine setting should be balanced against the potential for higher spending on downstream care.” (Modern Healthcare*; Health Affairs)
NEW & NOTED
Essential and hesitant: Essential workers outside of health care are less likely to want a vaccine than the general public, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report. More than 20% say they will definitely not get the vaccine, compared to 7% of non-essential workers. Race and education level play a role, but the strongest predictors are party identification and political ideology. (Axios; Kaiser Family Foundation)
Bye-bye, waivers: Health insurers are joining other industries in rolling back consumer-friendly changes made early in the pandemic. Many had voluntarily waived all deductibles, copayments and other costs for insured patients who contracted COVID-19. No more: Over the last few months, a growing number of insurers are quietly ending those fee waivers. (Kaiser Health News)
HHS’ Think Cultural Health program recently launched “Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Maternal Health Care,” a free e-learning program geared toward clinicians who practice maternal health care and who want to advance health equity and help eliminate maternal health disparities. (AAFP News; Think Cultural Health)
MULTI-MEDIA
Can empathy for patients mitigate burnout?
Patients often feel they’re treated with a lack of empathy. At the same time physicians and nurses are suffering high levels of burnout. In this episode, Freakonomics Radio asks, “Could fixing the first problem solve the second?” It’s part of a larger question: How do you cure a compassion crisis? (Freakonomics Radio)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
"It was just five or six years ago that less than 50% of the country had functional electronic health records," and now that number is much higher. "That doesn't mean we don't have problems to solve ... I think the main challenge is the industry is so fragmented."—Micky Tripathi, PhD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, quoted in MedPage Today