FEDERAL HEALTH UPDATE
May 23, 2008Produced by Kate Connelly Theroux in collaboration with the U.S. Medicine Institute for Health Studies (USMI) To subscribe, please visit http://fedhealthinst.org/subscriber.cfm. Sponsored by
Additional sponsorship by   
|
|||
Congressional Schedule
Speakers included the Iraqi Minister of Health, Dr. Salih Al-Hasnawi; Dr. Naeema Al Gasseer of the World Health Organization; and Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense, health affairs. The event was the result of the collaborative efforts between the Embassy of Iraq, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Health Affairs and Health and Human Services. http://www.health.mil/Press/Release.aspx?ID=210
The SABRE awards, administered by The Holmes Group, are bestowed annually and are among the most coveted and respected awards in the public relations industry. The SABRE awards competition received more than 1,800 entries. “That Guy” is a Department of Defense-funded, multi-faceted campaign to increase awareness of the problems associated with binge drinking. The counter-marketing effort uses www.thatguy.com as the key communication tool and has recently expanded its advertising with billboards, newspapers, television and radio ads. The campaign is a key element in TRICARE’s Healthy Choices program. In addition to the prestigious SABRE award, “That Guy” has earned the following awards:
http://www.tricare.mil/pressroom/news.aspx?fid=406
The awards recognize the company's outstanding achievement in using video as an effective medium to reach military service members and their families with educational resources and clinical support tools. Telly Awards recognize outstanding local, regional and national cable and television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film production. Winners represent the best work from the most respected production companies, television and cable stations, corporate video departments and advertising agencies in the world. TriWest won two awards for videos serving military community. The first award was for streaming videos of TRICARE educational briefings for Guard and Reserve members. The videos are available at the National Guard and Reserve Resource on topics, such as active duty benefits, post-activation and TRICARE Reserve Select, TRICARE's health care plan for members of the National Guard and Reserve, and their families. The second video project recognized was "Help From Home: Deployment Support for Military Service Members and their Families." TriWest produced the video to respond to the increase in combat stress-related issues for active duty service members. The two-disc DVD program provides discrete deployment support for service members and their families to view in private. In the music category, TriWest won for its music video for Five For Fighting's song "Freedom Never Cries." The video is intended to inspire and demonstrate TriWest's unwavering support for all of the men and women and military families serving our country. In the Live Events category, TriWest was recognized for its A Celebration of Freedom, an event sponsored by TriWest, which honored the nation's Medal of Honor recipients and provided a platform for leaders from across the country to focus on freedom and the virtues of those who defend it. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-22-2008/0004819493&EDATE=
Give an Hour’s mission is to develop a national network of volunteers capable of responding to the behavioral health needs of returning veterans and their family members. While spouses, children, parents, siblings and unmarried partners of military personnel are all being adversely affected by multiple deployments and extended lengths of tour - parents, siblings and unmarried partners are not eligible to receive behavioral health services through the TRICARE program. Give an Hour fills this gap by expanding the “family” to include all individuals impacted, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters. ValueOptions will communicate with TRICARE network providers in the South Region to make them aware of the Give an Hour organization and encourage them to contact Give an Hour if they are interested in participating. In addition, Humana Military and DefenseWeb Technologies, wholly-owned subsidiary of HMHS, redesigned the Give an Hour Web site. The new design enhances visibility for visitors and potential volunteer providers. For more information about Give an Hour and a list of local volunteer providers, please visit www.giveanhour.org
The first panel, the “Blue Ribbon Work Group on Suicide Prevention in the Veterans Population,” will be comprised of government experts in various suicide prevention and education programs. Those experts will come from agencies including the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The five-member work group is expected to meet from June 11-13, and will develop a report with recommendations for the VA Secretary within 15 days of meeting. The second panel consists of nine members made up of nationally renowned experts in public health suicide programs, suicide research and clinical treatment programs. Collectively, the panel will provide professional opinion, interpretation, and conclusions on information and data to the work group. It will also make recommendations to the work group on opportunities for improvement in VA’s programs. To see a list of the members of each panel, please visit http://www1.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1506
The EHR demonstration project is expected to reduce medical errors and improve the quality of care for an estimated 3.6 million Americans. Over a five-year period, financial incentives will be provided to as many as 1,200 small- to medium-sized physician practices in 12 communities for using certified EHRs to improve quality, as measured by their performance on specific clinical quality measures. Additional bonus payments will be available, based on a standardized survey measuring the number of EHR functionalities incorporated by the physician practice. Total payments under the demonstration for all five years may be up to $58,000 per physician or up to $290,000 per practice. The 12 EHR community partners will be announced in early June. CMS then will begin working with community partners to recruit small- and medium-sized primary care physician practices to take part in the demonstration. Four of the participating communities will begin recruitment in fall of 2008 and the remaining eight will begin in 2009. For more information about the EHR demonstration project, visit http://www.cms.hhs.gov/DemoProjectsEvalRpts/downloads/2008_Electronic_Health_Records_Demonstration.pdf. To learn more about Connecting to Better Health Care, please visit www.hhs.gov/secretary/connecthealthcare.
The goal of the Acute Care Episode (ACE) demonstration is to use a global payment to better align the incentives for both types of providers leading to better quality and greater efficiency in the care that is delivered. The demonstration will also test the effect that transparent price and quality information has on beneficiary choice and provider referrals for select inpatient care. CMS plans to competitively award only one ACE demonstration site per market area during the first year of the demonstration. Each demonstration site, or “Value-Based Care Center”, will be selected and actively marketed by CMS to both beneficiaries and referring physicians. For purposes of this demonstration, a bundled payment is a single payment for both Part A and Part B Medicare services furnished during an inpatient stay. Currently, CMS generally pays the hospital a single prospectively-determined amount under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) for all the care it furnishes to the patient during an inpatient stay. The physicians who care for the patient during the stay are paid separately under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for each service they perform. The separate payment systems can lead to conflicting incentives that may affect decisions about what care will be provided. The select sets of procedures included in the bundled payment demonstration are 28 cardiac and nine orthopedic inpatient surgical services. These elective procedures were selected because profit margins and volume have historically been high; there is sufficient marketplace competition to ensure interested demonstration applicants; and the services are easy to specify, and quality metrics are available for them. This demonstration provides an opportunity for Value-Based Care Centers to develop efficiencies in the care they provide to beneficiaries. It also provides an opportunity for Medicare to share savings achieved through the demonstration with beneficiaries who, based on quality and cost, choose to receive care from participating demonstration providers. Beneficiary choice of providers will remain and will not be restricted by this demonstration. The ACE demonstration is open to applicants from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado. More information can be found at: Acute Care Episode (ACE) Demonstration Project
The new program, established this month, is the culmination of efforts by William A. Gahl, M.D., Ph.D., clinical director at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI); John I. Gallin, M.D., director of the NIH Clinical Center; and Stephen Groft, Pharm.D., director of the NIH Office of Rare Diseases (ORD). With the program infrastructure now in place, the program is ready to accept patients, the first of which is expected to be seen in July 2008. To evaluate each patient enrolled in the new program, NIH will enlist the expertise of more than 25 of its senior attending physicians, whose specialties include endocrinology, immunology, oncology, dermatology, dentistry, cardiology and genetics. Dr. Gahl, who is an expert on rare genetic diseases, will serve as director of the new program. To be considered for this NIH pilot program, a patient must be referred by a physician and provide all medical records and diagnostic test results requested by NIH. Patients who meet the program’s criteria — as many as 100 each year — will then be asked to undergo additional evaluation during a visit to the NIH Clinical Center that may take up to a week. Two nurse practitioners will manage patient recruitment and logistics for the new program, which will utilize existing facilities and staff already at the NIH Clinical Center, NHGRI and ORD. Funding for the program includes $280,000 per year from the ORD. For more information about the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, go to: http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/Undiagnosed.
A new FDA white paper, “The Sentinel Initiative -- A National Strategy for Monitoring Medical Product Safety,” describes the proposed Sentinel System and calls for a public-private collaboration to develop and implement it. The system would enable FDA to analyze significantly more information than it can today by tapping into vast databases of health information to detect early signs of emerging safety problems. The plan includes the development of a new electronic system that will enable FDA to query a broad array of information to identify possible post-market adverse events. That Sentinel System will capitalize on existing large electronic claims and medical records data sources maintained by private and government entities that agree to participate in this nationwide effort. This initiative will make it possible for federal agencies, states, and academic researchers to use claims data from the Medicare prescription drug program (Part D) for public health and safety research, quality initiatives, care coordination and other research and analysis. The Sentinel System is an important example of how electronic health records and other electronic health information, such as the Medicare data, can help move the nation toward a system that delivers safer and better quality health care. Creating an active surveillance system such as the Sentinel System was one of the recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine in a 2006 report on ways to improve the safe use of drugs. The recently passed Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (FDAAA) includes provisions that call for the development of such a system. As planned, the Sentinel System will fulfill some requirements of FDAAA while also meeting additional FDA needs. For more information, please visit http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2008pres/05/20080522a.html
Google Health, at www.google.com/health, is the latest entrant in the growing field of companies offering personal health records on the Web competing with longtime online health services like WebMD and Microsoft’s Revolution Health. The companies all hope to capitalize eventually on the trend of increasingly seeking health information online and the potential of Internet tools to help consumers manage their own health care and medical spending. Google conducted a two-month trial this year with the Cleveland Clinic and found that, despite concerns that patients would be leery of using PHRs, participating patients were eager to use the Google health records. The pilot project, limited to 1,600 patients, was quickly oversubscribed, according to C. Martin Harris, the Cleveland Clinic’s chief information officer. The Google record allows the user to send personal information, at the individual’s discretion, into the clinic record or to pull information from the clinic records into the Google personal file. The ability of patients to send information, in particular, can be helpful to clinic doctors. For example, if a person sees specialists outside the clinic and receives a drug prescription from an outside doctor, it raises the risk of harmful drug interactions. In the Cleveland trial, patients apparently did not shun the Google health records because of qualms that their personal health information might not be secure if held by a large technology company. In Google Health, as in the pilot project, the company is not selling advertisements. And what information is shared with doctors, clinics or pharmacies is controlled by the individual. More than two dozen companies and institutions announced that they are partners with Google Health, including Walgreens, CVS, the American Heart Association, Quest Diagnostics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. The partnerships are not exclusive arrangements. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/technology/20google.html?_r=1&ref=health&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
The law allows the state to negotiate with health insurance companies for health insurance for Floridians age 19 to 64. Plans could run as low as $150 or less a month and would have to include preventive services, screenings, office visits, outpatient and inpatient surgery, urgent care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment and diabetic supplies. Insurance companies would also have to offer a plan that includes catastrophic and hospital coverage. Those who have been without health insurance for at least six months are eligible. The bill also does away with the limit on the number of families allowed to pay full premiums and buy into the Florida Kid Care Program. Before, there was a 10 percent cap on enrollment of the "full pay" families. Small businesses also benefit from the bill that creates a Florida Health Choices Corp. The organization is a marketplace where businesses with less than 50 employees will have an increased range of health insurance choices. http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2008/05/19/daily33.html
|
|||
If you need further information on any of the items in the Federal Health Update, please contact Kate Connelly Theroux at (703) 447-3257 or by e-mail at katetheroux@fedhealthinst.org. To subscribe, please visit http://fedhealthinst.org/subscriber.cfm. To unsubscribe, please send an email to newsletter@fedhealthinst.org with UNSUBSCRIBE as the subject. Back issues availiable at Federal Health Update Archives. |
|||
© Copyright 2007, U.S. Medicine Institute 5185 MacArthur Blvd. NW, Suite 104-656, Washington, DC 20016 (202)271-5814 postmaster@fedhealthinst.org |