Cartoon – Coronavirus Update
Category Archives: Health Policy
Cartoon – Coronavirus on Wall Street
Cartoon – USA Coronavirus Response
Senators demand Cigna, Optum turn over documents on insulin prices
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are demanding Optum and Express Scripts turn over documents on how they determine insulin prices.
Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee demanded Cigna and Optum produce critical documents over the pricing of insulin, with a subpoena threat looming.
Cigna failed to produce any documents related to the committee’s request back in April 2019 and Optum didn’t produce essential documents, according to letters to both companies sent earlier this week by committee leaders. The documents would relate to the actions of pharmacy benefit managers such as Cigna’s Express Scripts on the rising costs of insulin.
“Cigna’s unwillingness to provide the documents we requested fits an industry-wide pattern of fighting efforts to shed light on PBMs’ practices,” the letter (PDF) to the insurer read.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the committee’s chairman and ranking member respectively, wrote that Cigna’s failure to comply has “reached an endpoint.” The insurer has until March 10 to provide more information or face a subpoena.
UnitedHealth Group’s Optum did produce thousands of pages for the committee, but a majority of them were irrelevant, already publicly available or duplicative.
“For example, Optum has produced more than 4,000 pages of publicly available formulary information guides and internal formulary drug lists that contain virtually no information related to the insulin therapeutic class,” the senators’ letter (PDF) to Optum said.
The original request for documentation had called for internal communications that would help the committee understand how Optum made decisions on “the out-of-pocket price patients pay for their insulin,” the letter said.
Grassley and Wyden launched the investigation last February into the price of insulin, which has increased up to 500%. The senators sent letters to leading insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi regarding the spike.
The senators also wanted to learn the process used for negotiations and agreements between PBMs and large plans on patient cost-sharing.
Cigna-Express Scripts said that it takes the committee’s inquiry “very seriously and have been engaged with them on this request. We are committed to being cooperative.”
Optum said that it share’s the committee’s concens regarding the high prices for insulin set by manufacturers.
“We have provided thousands of pages of documents in response to the committee’s request, and will continue to work with them on this important issue,” the company said.
FTC to block Philadelphia area health system merger in 1st big hospital challenge in 3 years
Dive Brief:
- The Federal Trade Commission has moved to block the proposed merger between two nonprofit Pennsylvania health systems over anticompetitive concerns in its first challenge to hospital M&A in more than three years.
- Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network both provide inpatient general acute care and inpatient acute rehabilitation services in Philadelphia County and Montgomery County. A marriage between the two systems, which agreed to definitively merge in September 2018, would harm patients because the two systems would no longer compete for patients and for inclusion in payer networks, the FTC says.
- Jefferson and Einstein defended the deal Thursday in a joint statement provided to Healthcare Dive, saying they remain “confident our merger will result in continued high-quality care for our consumers.”
Dive Insight:
FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson has pledged to be tougher on hospital deals in 2020, including reviewing previously closed deals to see if they’ve delivered on promised cost and quality metrics. The last time the FTC questioned a major hospital merger was in 2016, when it urged Virginia and Tennessee not to approve the union of large operators Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont. The push was unsuccessful, and the two coalesced into rural system Ballad Health.
The deal, first announced in March 2018, has stagnated over the past two years as it was scrutinized by regulators at the FTC and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
“This merger would eliminate the competitive pressure that has driven quality improvements and lowered rates,” Ian Conner, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. The rivalry between the two nonprofit players for market dominance has resulted in upgraded medical facilities and technological investments, but that progress could stall if Jefferson and Albert Einstein combined, FTC said.
Jefferson and Einstein boast a combined roughly $5.9 billion in annual revenue, along with 18 hospitals, more than 50 outpatient and urgent care centers and a handful of rehab and post-acute facilities. Jefferson, the bigger player, has 14 hospitals across South Jersey and Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks counties.
The regulators said they will soon file a formal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The complaint alleges that as a result of the merger, Jefferson and Einstein would control at least 60% of the inpatient general acute care services market in North Philadelphia, and 45% in Montgomery. That includes services like medical or surgical diagnostics and treatments requiring an overnight stay.
Jefferson and Einstein manage six of the eight inpatient rehab facilities for recovering from serious, acute conditions in the Philadelphia region, and would control at least 70% of that market if combined.
The hospitals said their marriage represents a “creative effort” to increase access at a time when safety net hospitals are struggling.
“We believe we have presented a strong and comprehensive case as to how the merger would benefit the patients we serve and advance our academic mission without reducing competition for healthcare services,” the systems, which have had an academic partnership for more than two decades, said.
Several studies have debunked theories that bigger is better in terms of quality of care when it comes to health systems.
FTC plans to seek a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent Jefferson and Albert Einstein from consummating the merger pending an administrative trial scheduled to being in September this year.
Why Are Nonprofit Hospitals So Highly Profitable?
These institutions receive tax exemptions for community benefits that often don’t really exist.
“So, how much money do you guys make if I do that test you’re ordering for me?” This is a question I hear frequently from my patients, and it’s often followed by some variant of, “I thought hospitals were supposed to be nonprofit.”
Patients are understandably confused. They see hospitals consolidating and creating vast medical empires with sophisticated marketing campaigns and sleek digs that resemble luxury hotels. And then there was the headline-grabbing nugget from a Health Affairs study that seven of the 10 most profitable hospitals in America are nonprofit hospitals.
Hospitals fall into three financial categories. Two are easy to understand: There are fully private hospitals that mostly function like any other business, responsible to shareholders and investors. And there are public hospitals, which are owned by state or local governments and have obligations to care for underserved populations. And then there are “private nonprofit” hospitals, which include more than half of our hospitals.
Nearly all of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals are nonprofits. These are the medical meccas that come to mind when we think of the best of American medicine — Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mass General.
The nonprofit label comes from the fact that they are exempt from federal and local taxes in exchange for providing a certain amount of “community benefit.”
Nonprofit hospitals have their origins in the charity hospitals of the early 1900s, but over the last century they’ve gradually shifted from that model. Now their explosive growth has many questioning how we define “nonprofit” and what sort of responsibility these hospitals have to the communities that provide this financial dispensation.
It’s time to rethink the concept of nonprofit hospitals. Tax exemption is a gift provided by the community and should be treated as such. Hospitals’ community benefit should be defined more explicitly in terms of tangible medical benefits for local residents.
It actually isn’t much of a surprise that nonprofit hospitals are often more profitable than for-profit hospitals. If a private business doesn’t have to pay taxes, its expenses will be lower. Additionally, because nonprofit hospitals are defined as charitable institutions, they can benefit from tax-free contributions from donors and tax-free bonds for capital projects, things that for-profit hospitals cannot take advantage of.
The real question surrounding nonprofit hospitals is whether the benefits to the community equal what taxpayers donate to these hospitals in the form of tax-exempt status.
On paper, the average value of community benefits for all nonprofits about equals the value of the tax exemption, but there is tremendous variation among individual hospitals, with many falling short. There is also intense disagreement about how those community benefits are calculated and whether they actually serve the community in question.
Charity medical care is what most people think of when it comes to a community benefit, and before 1969 that was the legal requirement for hospitals to qualify for tax-exempt status. In that year, the tax code was changed to allow for a wide range of expenses to qualify as community benefits. Charitable care became optional and it was left up to the hospitals to decide how to pay back that debt. Hospitals could even declare that accepting Medicaid insurance was a community benefit and write off the difference between the Medicaid payment and their own calculations of cost.
An analysis by Politico found that since the full Affordable Care Act coverage expansion, which brought millions more paying customers into the field, revenue in the top seven nonprofit hospitals (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report) increased by 15 percent, while charity care — the most tangible aspect of community benefit — decreased by 35 percent.
Communities are often conflicted about the nonprofit hospitals in their midst. Many of these institutions are enormous employers — sometimes the largest employer in town — but the economic benefits do not always trickle down to the immediate neighborhoods. It is not unusual to see a stark contrast between these gleaming campuses and the disadvantaged neighborhoods that surround them.
In some communities, nonprofit hospitals are beloved institutions with a history of caring for generations of families. In other communities, the sums of money devoted to lavish expansions, aggressive advertising and eye-popping executive compensation are a source of irritation.
The average chief executive’s package at nonprofit hospitals is worth $3.5 million annually. (According to I.R.S. regulations, “No part of their net earnings is allowed to inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.”) From 2005 to 2015, average chief executive compensation in nonprofit hospitals increased by 93 percent. Over that same period, pediatricians saw a 15 percent salary increase. Nurses got 3 percent.
A number of communities that think nonprofit hospitals take more than they give back have started to sue. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center fought off one lawsuit from the city’s mayor to revoke its tax-exempt status. Last year it faced another from the Pennsylvania attorney general, alleging that the medical center, valued at $20 billion, did not fulfill “its obligation as a public charity” (the lawsuit was dismissed).
Morristown Hospital in New Jersey lost most of its property-tax exemption because it was found to be behaving as a for-profit institution. The judge in the case wrote that if all nonprofit hospitals operated like this, then “modern nonprofit hospitals are essentially legal fictions.”
It’s important to recognize the extreme variance in hospitals’ financial status. Many nonprofit hospitals, especially in rural areas, struggle mightily; scores of rural hospitals have closed — and hundreds more are teetering — leading to spikes in local death rates. At the other end are hospitals that earn several thousand dollars in profit per patient.
The most profitable nonprofit hospitals tend to be part of huge health care systems. Consolidations are one of the driving forces behind the towering profits, because monopoly hospitals are known to charge more than nonmonopoly hospitals.
Should these highly profitable institutions be exempt from the taxes that pay for local roads, police services, fire protection and 911 services? Should local residents have to pay for the garbage collection for institutions that can afford multimillion-dollar salaries for top executives?
Tax exemption needs to be redefined. Low-impact projects such as community health fairs that function more like marketing shouldn’t be allowed as part of the calculation. Nor should things that primarily benefit the institution, like staff training.
Additionally, hospitals should not be allowed to declare Medicaid “losses” as a community benefit. While it’s true that Medicaid typically pays less than private insurance companies, Medicaid plays a crucial role for private insurance markets by acting as a high-risk pool for patients with severe illness and disability. Hospitals benefit mightily from this taxpayer-funded arrangement. These large medical centers also enthusiastically accept taxpayer money for research, something that burnishes their image and bolsters their rankings. That enthusiasm needs to be mandated to extend toward Medicaid patients and the face value of their insurance.
The I.R.S. states that charitable hospitals “must be organized and operated exclusively for specific tax-exempt purposes.” Thus charitable care should be front and center. Spending on social determinants of health can also be a legitimate community benefit, but the community that is footing the tax break needs to have a forceful say in how this money is spent, rather than leave it solely up to the hospital.
As many policy scholars have noted, tax exemption is a blunt instrument. For struggling hospitals, particularly in communities with a shortage of health care resources, tax exemption can make sense. In medically saturated areas, where profits and executive compensation approach Wall Street levels, tax exemption should raise eyebrows.
If society decides that tax exemption is a worthwhile means to improve health — and it certainly can be — then our regulations need to be far stricter and more explicitly tied to community health. As the United States continues to fall behind its international peers in terms of health outcomes in local communities, there is certainly no lack of opportunity.
High-priced specialty drugs: Exposing the flaws in the system
https://theconversation.com/high-priced-specialty-drugs-exposing-the-flaws-in-the-system-129598
My husband, Andy, has Parkinson’s disease. A year ago, his neurologist recommended a new pill that he was to take at bedtime. We quickly learned that the medication would cost US$1,300 for a one-month supply of 30 pills. In addition, Andy could obtain the drug from only one specialty pharmacy and would have to use mail order.
This was our introduction to specialty drugs.
These medications are becoming increasingly common, though many Americans are unfamiliar with the term. In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration approved 59 new medications, of which 39 are considered specialty drugs.
Specialty drugs are generally high-cost drugs requiring special handling such as refrigeration or injection, though Andy’s did not. They treat complex conditions such as cancer and multiple sclerosis.
Specialty drugs are often available only through specialty pharmacies. In addition to filling prescriptions, these outlets provide educational and support services to patients. For example, they provide refill reminders and help patients learn how to inject their drugs.
In a forthcoming article, professor Isaac Buck and I argue that specialty drugs raise significant legal and ethical questions. These merit attention from the public and policymakers.
Specialty drug concerns
First, the term “specialty drug” is somewhat elusive and has no clear definition. In addition, government authorities and medical experts are not the ones who decide whether a medication is designated a specialty drug. Rather, the decision is entirely up to pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs.
PBMs administer health plans’ drug benefit programs and thereby serve insurers. PBMs have been criticized for driving up health care costs. Drugs that are specialty drugs under one insurance policy are sometimes classified differently in other policies. Furthermore, some specialty drugs are simple pills that do not involve complicated instructions, and thus, it is unclear why they are categorized as specialty drugs.
The second problem is the very high cost of specialty drugs. The average price tag of the more than 300 medications that are considered specialty drugs is approximately $79,000 per year. Almost half of the dollars that Americans pay for medications are spent on specialty drugs. In fact, Medicare spent $32.8 billion on specialty drugs in 2015.
Because of these exorbitant costs, some insurers have created what they call a “specialty tier” in their health plans. In this tier, patients’ cost-sharing responsibilities are higher than they are for medications in other tiers. If your drug is placed in a specialty tier, your coinsurance payment, or the percentage of cost that you pay, may be 25% to 33% of the drug’s price.
This leads to a situation in which you may have the least generous insurance coverage for your most expensive drugs. Under some plans you might pay $10 per month for generic drugs but hundreds of dollars per month for specialty drugs. This can translate into many thousands of dollars in annual out-of-pocket costs, even for consumers with good health insurance. There are no federal regulations in the U.S. that limit drug prices or insurers’ tiering practices.
Conflict of interest and patient choice
A third problem is conflict of interest. PBMs own or co-own the top four specialty pharmacies in the U.S., which are responsible for two-thirds of nationwide specialty drug prescription revenues.
PBMs frequently require patients to purchase their medications from the specific specialty pharmacy that they own. Thus, PBMs have much to gain from designating medications as specialty drugs. Doing so may lead to significant revenues in the form of purchases at PBM-owned specialty pharmacies.
A related problem is the limiting of patient choice. Many specialty pharmacies fill prescriptions only through mail order. Consequently, patients may be restricted to using just one pharmacy and be forced to rely on the mail for delivery.
Some patients enjoy the convenience of home delivery. Others, however, prefer the traditional approach of visiting a drugstore in person. They may worry that the mail will be late, their package will be stolen, or they will be out of town when the drugs arrive. Yet, such patients do not have the option of a brick and mortar pharmacy.
Possible corrective measures
Both political parties have stated that health care costs are a priority for them. However, they have shown a limited appetite for tackling this herculean problem.
The House recently passed a bill that would enable the federal government to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers. Such negotiations could well lower specialty drug prices. The Senate, however, is unlikely to approve the bill, and Congress is unlikely to pass sweeping legislation in a divisive election year.
There has been more success at the federal level in promoting consumer choice. Medicare rules establish that Medicare plans may not force participants to use mail-order pharmacies.
In the meantime, individual states offer useful solutions. For example, some have provided patients with relief in the form of capping out-of-pocket costs. California limits consumers’ expenditures to $250 or $500 for a 30-day supply, depending on the drug type.
At least 15 states also have pharmacy choice statutes. Several ban PBM mandates that prevent patients from freely selecting their preferred qualified pharmacy. Many ban mail-order only requirements.
Some states have recognized that PBMs should not be entirely free to designate medications as specialty drugs. Because such designations can significantly disadvantage patients and may increase patients’ costs, such states have statutory definitions for the term “specialty drug.”
They generally mandate that the drug require special administration, delivery, storage or oversight. Such requirements may justify purchase from a specialty pharmacy. However, drugs without complicated instructions should not be deemed specialty drugs.
One more option that some insurers have already adopted is allowing patients to obtain just a few pills or doses for an initial trial period. Sometimes individuals quickly learn that they cannot tolerate a medication or that it is ineffective. Such “partial fill” programs can spare patients the exorbitant cost of a full 30-day specialty drug supply.
Specialty drugs contribute significantly to the American health care cost crisis. Additional state, or better yet, federal laws should be enacted to constrain PBMs’ authority over specialty drugs. We need further regulation concerning drug classification, pricing, conflicts of interest and patient choice.
Five Healthcare Industry Changes to Watch in 2020
https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/news/five-healthcare-industry-changes-watch-2020
Industry experts expect significant changes to shake up the healthcare landscape in the next few years, which will affect both health insurers and providers. Many are the result of a shift toward value-based care, a move toward decreased care in hospital settings, technological advances, and other forces.
Here’s a look at what can payers and providers can expect to occur, why each change is occurring, and how payers and providers can prepare for each change:
1. A shift in healthcare delivery from hospital to ambulatory settings
Healthcare delivery will continue to move from inpatient to outpatient facilities. “More surgeries and diagnostic procedures that historically have required an inpatient hospital stay can now be performed more safely and efficiently in an outpatient setting,” says Stephen A. Timoni, JD, an attorney and partner at the law firm Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, in Westfield, New Jersey, who represents healthcare providers in areas of reimbursement and managed care contracting. A growing volume of outpatient care will be provided in ambulatory surgery centers, primary care clinics, retail clinics, urgent care centers, nurse managed health centers, imaging facilities, emergency departments, retail clinics, and patients’ homes.
This change is occurring as the result of clinical innovations, patient preferences, financial incentives, electronic health records, telemedicine, and an increased focus on improving quality of care and clinical outcomes. “The upward trend in value-based payment models is also influencing this shift, with the goal of reducing the cost of care and improving the overall patient experience,” Timoni says.
Payers and providers can prepare for this shift by analyzing and forecasting the cost and reimbursement implications of providing care in outpatient settings compared to inpatient settings. They should continue to analyze changing patient demographics, consumer preferences, and satisfaction trends, Timoni says. Collecting and analyzing data regarding quality and clinical outcomes as the result of changes in delivery of care from inpatient to outpatient is also key. Healthcare providers should develop effective strategies to grow capacity and infrastructure for outpatient services and invest in innovative mobile technologies, diagnostic tools, and telemedicine systems.
2. Consolidation will continue industry wide
More healthcare entities will continue to merge together. “Even though the number of available partners for transactions is shrinking, new deals pop up all the time because smaller entities are being targeted or entities that had been holding out are now changing their position,” says Matthew Fisher, JD, partner and chair of the Health Law Group at Mirick O’Connell, a law firm in Westborough, Massachusetts. Increased consolidation will result in higher healthcare prices as larger sized institutions use their size to their advantage. Another impact will be narrowing the field of contracting options, which will result in greater dominance by fewer entities in a market.
This change is occurring because industry stakeholder believes that consolidation is the way to survive in a healthcare landscape still being shaped by the ACA. “The belief is that value-based care models require single unified entities as opposed to more contractual-based ventures to succeed,” Fisher says. Another factor is that momentum for consolidations across the industry has continued to build and no player wants to be left behind.
Along these lines, Timoni says that consolidation has been motivated by the evolving and challenging commercial and government reimbursement models which include lower fee-for-service payment rates, value-based payment components, and incentives to move care from inpatient to outpatient settings. “Basic economic theory suggests that consolidation of hospitals and physicians enables these combined providers to charge higher prices to private payers as the result of a lack of competition,” Timoni says. “Likewise, combined insurers are able to charge higher premiums to their subscribers.”
Payers and providers can prepare for this change by evaluating their operations and determining whether consolidation with another entity is advantageous. “This requires assessing an entity’s operations and the risks of consolidation,” Fisher says.
Timoni advises payers and providers to monitor the consolidation landscape and develop effective merger and acquisition strategies. These strategies should focus on optimizing economies of scale to reduce costs and finding the best partners to achieve improved quality of care and effectively manage population health.
3. Protecting data privacy
Ongoing attention will be given to protecting the privacy of healthcare data. New laws, at both the federal and state levels, will be considered that could introduce new regulatory requirements, Fisher says.
While a federal law in an election year may be doubtful, individual states are proceeding. The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), intended to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection, will become effective in 2020, for example. Even though the CCPA doesn’t cover all healthcare data, healthcare organizations will still collect additional information that could be subject to CCPA, which means more compliance obligations, Fisher says. Other states are considering how to jump on the privacy legislation bandwagon, which means that regulatory requirements will increase. “Even in the absence of legislation, payers and providers can expect individuals to assert concerns and use public pressure to drive increased attention to privacy issues,” Fisher says.
Meanwhile, debates around what is meant by privacy continue to evolve, Fisher continues. A backlash against the non-transparent sharing of healthcare data and arguable profiteering is creating anger among patients and other groups. Simultaneously, data breaches continue to be reported on a daily basis. Add in that healthcare is a prime target, and all of the factors point to healthcare needing to do more to protect data.
Payers and providers can embrace increased data privacy by focusing on existing compliance efforts, which will require taking time to better understanding HIPAA. “Ignoring or only making superficial efforts to respect data privacy is insufficient,” Fisher says. “Merely doing what is legally permissible may not be good enough.”
4. Consumerization of healthcare
As patients assume more financial responsibility for their healthcare costs due to higher premiums, co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles, they have become more concerned with the value of the care they receive as well as cost. Patients will likely demand improved access to clearer benefits, billing, and network information to improve transparency, says Brooks Dexter, MBA, Los Angeles-based managing director and head of the healthcare M&A advisory practice at Duff & Phelps, a global consultancy firm.
“Healthcare providers must follow suit to meet value expectations and deliver more consumer-friendly services or may risk losing market share to innovative new healthcare arrangements, such as direct primary care, which offer convenient and quality care with simplified medical billing,” Dexter says. Some ways to do this are to offer better patient portals, expanded hours, improved access, and clear procedure pricing. Despite the trend, payers and providers will most likely continue to resist CMS’ efforts to force greater cost transparency by requiring hospitals to post payer-specific negotiated charges for common services that can be shopped.
Furthermore, Peter Manoogian, principal at ZS, a consulting firm focused on healthcare in Boston, says that the voices of older adults will become comparatively louder as this rapidly growing segment becomes more tech-savvy. The Trump Administration supports increased use of Medicare Advantage and expanding consumer choices. Plan options will reach a record high this year and create an unprecedented amount of choices for this population. The average number of plans a beneficiary has access to this year will be 28, up by a whopping 50% from 2017. What’s more, new entrants that boast a customer-driven approach such as Oscar Health are entering the fray in major markets such as New York and Houston.
Health plans need to be laser focused on improving their understanding and engagement of their customers—who are evolving themselves. “To stay ahead of the change, health plans need access to the right data coupled with leading-edge analytics and technology to continuously mine insights on what members are seeking in their healthcare experience, how patients and providers interact throughout their healthcare journey, and how to meet the needs of future healthcare customers,” Manoogian says.
Health plans will need to take more of a retail focus than what they’re accustomed to, Manoogian says. The bar for providing a great experience and retaining members will also increase.
5. More technological innovations will emerge
Technological innovation will continue to dramatically and rapidly change the manner in which healthcare is delivered, resulting in more personalized care, improved clinical outcomes and patient experience, and overall quality of life. “Information systems, mobile technology, high-tech digital devices, and electronic medical records will allow payers and providers to accurately measure clinical outcomes and effectively manage the continuum of medical care and their population’s overall health,” Timoni says.
One specific way that care will change is that providers will start seeing telehealth play a more critical role in care delivery as the brick-and-mortar, in-person care model becomes less common. “Telehealth will grow past a nice-to-have tool into a standard of care, particularly for low-risk and predictable appointments,” says Cindy Gaines, MSN, RN, clinical leader, Population Health Management, Philips, a company focused on transforming care through collaborative health management in Alpharetta, Georgia. This transformation will enable providers to better tailor their care to patients’ unique needs, while increasing patient autonomy and engagement.
Technological innovations are occurring due to booming private sector interest and investment in medical technology innovation. “Patients are demanding real-time health information, personalized medicine, higher quality of care, and convenient treatment options,” Timoni says. “Payers are demanding more detailed and expansive outcomes data to scientifically manage the reimbursement system to lower costs and improve their subscribers’ health. The medical and information technology fields are attracting more high-skilled workers, who will continue to drive innovation to new levels as long as investor interest is sustained.”
Regarding the increased use of telehealth, Gaines says that many appointments that occur in a hospital today can take place outside of the hospital. And, as the healthcare industry increasingly moves toward value-based care, providers need to extend their line-of-sight outside of a hospital’s four walls. For example, a low-risk follow-up appointment after an operation is usually mostly dialogue and has a predictable outcome—it could be conducted electronically. “By filling up hospitals with visits that could occur virtually, it makes it harder for patients who need face-to-face healthcare access to get it,” she says.
A lack of insurance coverage is a major impediment to telehealth adoption for most health systems. Therefore, providers should pair guaranteed reimbursement opportunities with change management workflows to advance these efforts, Gaines says. They would also be smart to leverage their patients’ everyday devices to manage their care, whether it’s on their smart phone, a fitness watch, or voice assistant.
To embrace technological innovation, payers and providers must continue to be educated and aware of the expanding medical technology landscape and develop technology investment and deployment strategies. “Consider investing and participating in technology venture capital funds and partnering with private sector technology manufacturers and research institutions,” Timoni says.
Miami man with ‘junk plan’ owes thousands after hospital visit for coronavirus symptoms
A man in Miami went to Jackson Memorial Hospital last month to receive a test for coronavirus after developing flu-like symptoms. He didn’t have the virus, but he was hit with a $3,270 medical bill, according to the Miami Herald.
Osmel Martinez Azcue said he normally would have used over-the-counter medicine to fight his flu-like symptoms. However, since he had recently visited China, he followed the advice of public health experts and went to the hospital to get tested for coronavirus, known as COVID-19.
Mr. Azcue said hospital staff told him a CT scan would be necessary to screen for coronavirus. He asked to receive a flu test first. The flu test came back positive.
A few weeks after leaving Jackson Memorial Hospital, Mr. Azcue received a $3,270 medical bill. Though he was insured, Mr. Azcue had a so-called “junk plan,” which offered limited benefits and didn’t cover pre-existing conditions.
Based on his insurance plan, Mr. Azcue is responsible for $1,400 of the bill, hospital officials told the Miami Herald. However, to get the claim covered, Mr. Azcue said his insurance company requested three years of medical records to show that his flu didn’t relate to pre-existing conditions.
The sale of “junk plans,” like the one Mr. Azcue pays $180 per month for, expanded after President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back ACA regulations in 2018.
Access the full Miami Herald article here.
Half of insured adults are skipping primary care visits. Cost a major reason why
/GettyImages-9509623962-5b9c5e5d46e0fb002583bc07.jpg)
In a given year by 2016, almost 50 percent of adults with commercial insurance hadn’t visited a primary care physician, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
For the study, researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine wanted to better characterize primary care declines among adults. To do so, the study authors analyzed deidentified claims data from a national private insurer that covers roughly 20 million members each year, according to NPR.
They found from 2008-16, adult visits to primary care physicians fell by nearly 25 percent. The decline was largest among younger adults. The proportion of adults with no visits to primary care physicians in a given year climbed from 38.1 percent to 46.4 percent within the same period.
While the number of preventive checkups rose — likely because the ACA made the appointments cost-free — problem-based visits, such as going to a primary care physician for sickness or injury, declined more than 30 percent, according to NPR.
Problem-based visits saw out-of-pocket costs increase 31.5 percent during the study period, which could have affected the decline, according to researchers. Additionally, visits to alternative sites like urgent care clinics grew by 46.9 percent in the study period.
“Our results suggest that this decline may be explained by decreased real or perceived visit needs, financial deterrents, and use of alternative sources of care,” the study authors concluded.
HENRY KOTULA 