July 23, 2020 | On tenterhooks for telehealth
July 23, 2020
INDUSTRY NEWS
Court upholds site-neutral payments
The Health and Human Services’ site-neutral payment policy can go forward. Payment cuts to hospitals’ off-site outpatient departments were legal because the changes were volume-control measures that don’t have to be budget-neutral, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Friday. The American Hospital Association is reviewing the decision to determine next steps. America’s Essential Hospitals, which represents safety-net hospitals, said the decision is a “gut punch” to hospitals struggling during the pandemic and will impair access to care by placing barriers to expanding outpatient care in underserved communities. (Modern Healthcare)
Bipartisan legislation introduced in the House makes permanent some temporary changes CMS made in telehealth coverage. Among other things, it would eliminate most geographic and originating-site restrictions on the use of telehealth in Medicare, allowing telehealth visits to be conducted in a patient’s home. It would also permit rural health clinics and federally qualified health clinics to furnish telehealth services. (Medscape)
Millions affected by lost workplace coverage
As many as 10 million Americans could lose health coverage as a result of pandemic-related job losses, and 48 million working-age adults could see someone in their household lose a job as a result of the pandemic, according to a report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute. Of people who lose their own employer-sponsored coverage, 3.3 million are expected to be added to a family member’s employer-sponsored policy, while 600,000 will enroll via the individual market and 2.8 million will enroll in Medicaid. (Healthcare Finance; report)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
Amazon launching on-site employee clinic
Amazon is offering on-site and near-site clinics for employees. And it’s keeping the door open to offering them to the public. For now, the company will pilot 20 primary care centers in Dallas-Fort Worth; San Bernardino-Moreno Valley, Calif.; Louisville; Phoenix; and Detroit, covering 115,000 employees and their families. The clinics will be staffed and run by Crossover Health, which works with self-insured employers on primary care for their workforce. Amazon has plans to expand next year if the clinics are successful. (Healthcare Dive)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Working memory, social distancing
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests people who follow social distancing guidelines may have better cognitive functioning than those who don’t. Researchers provided questionnaires on demographics and social distancing practices to 850 participants and conducted tests of their personality and cognitive capacity After controlling for education, mood, personality and income, they found that working memory scores predicted social distancing behavior. The takeaway? Avoid information overload when communicating about social compliance: Make it short and succinct. (PNAS; press release)
The dip in fatal drug overdoses in 2018 may have been an anomaly. Preliminary data from the CDC reveals that the number of deaths from drug overdose in the U.S. rose 4.6% in 2019 after falling for the first time in three decades in 2018. According to the CDC, the District of Columbia and 18 states all experienced increases of at least 10% in 2019. Much of the hike can be attributed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, but deaths from methamphetamine and cocaine also rose. (The Hill)
NEW & NOTED
Could be worse. Oh, wait… A Colorado squirrel has tested positive for the bubonic plague, and in Mongolia, a teenage boy died from bubonic plague after hunting and eating marmot. Back in Colorado, Denver is coping with a small outbreak of trench fever, which is spread by lice. (CNN; Medscape; Kaiser Health News)
COVID’s neuro-psychiatric complications: Research shows that a wide range of serious psychiatric and neurological complications are tied to Covid-19—including stroke, psychosis and a dementia-like syndrome. The study underscores how aggressively the coronavirus can attack beyond the lungs, and—of particular interest now—the risk the disease can pose to younger adults. (STAT; Lancet Psychiatry)
Beyond politics: Six public health groups said in a joint statement that the new COVID-reporting process will likely worsen the pandemic response. “In the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century, it is counter-productive to create a new mechanism which will be extremely complicated to build and implement,” they said in a prepared statement. (Healthcare Dive; statement)
MULTI-MEDIA
About 1,000 children worldwide have had the condition known as MIS-C—Multisymptom Inflammatory Syndrome in Children. Children’s hospitals around the U.S. are trying to monitor them after they recover to assess any long-term effects. (NPR)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
“This suggests policy makers will need to consider individuals’ general cognitive abilities when promoting compliance behaviors such as wearing a mask or engaging in physical distancing,” Weiwei Zhang, PhD, one of the researchers on the link between working memory and social distancing, in a press release about a PNAS study.
GTMRx Institute's “Blueprint for Change” Highlights Need for Medication Management Reform and Steps to Achieve it
In the current health care climate, preventative medicine has taken center stage, and with it an important debate around the need for Comprehensive Medication Management (CMM), a practice level, team-based process. The GTMRx Blueprint for Change outlines steps for reform, including an evidence-based process of care, CMM, that personalizes the approach and leads to better care, reduced costs and improved patient satisfaction and provider work life by engaging everyone involved in patient care—from physicians to clinical pharmacists, health plan sponsors, providers, consumer groups and policymakers.