The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), signed into law in 2015, eliminates the failed Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, but also fundamentally revamps how Medicare pays physicians. This presentation offers insight on MACRA with a special focus on the new proposed rule released on April 27 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). What's in the proposed rule, and how can we respond to best support advanced primary care?
On Feb. 2, 2016, the PCPCC released its new medical home evidence report, "The Patient-Centered Medical Home's Impact on Cost and Quality: Annual Review of Evidence 2014-2015." The report summarizes PCMH cost and utilization results from peer-reviewed studies, state government evaluations, and industry reports published within the past year. And new to this edition, the report also includes early federal program evaluations published between October 2014 and November 2015.
The Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI) grant awards, announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in September 2015, aims to equip more than 140,000 clinicians with the tools and support needed to improve quality of care, increase patients’ access to information, and reduce costs.
Long before patient-centered care became a centerpiece of health care reform efforts or a media buzz word, Planetree was defining what it means to be patient-centered. With more than three and a half decades of experience listening to patients and partnering with organizations to design and implement patient-centered approaches to care, the Planetree model provides, in concrete and actionable detail, a pathway for:
Partnering more effectively with patients
Engaging family members to improve quality, drive outcomes and foster continuity
Primary care teams, providing comprehensive care within a patient-centered medical home, have the clinical competencies, infrastructure, and relationships necessary to improve oral health and reduce oral health disparities. Yet few primary care practices include oral health as a component of routine medical care.
As patients encounter rising costs for health care services, there are new opportunities for clinicians to work with patients to understand how informed referrals and shared decision-making can improve patient experience. Too often, clinicians don't have information on the relative cost of health care services or facilities. In an effort to work toward standardization and enable comparisons, the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) recently completed an 18 month pilot to produce total cost of care and resource-use data in 5 regions.
How can we promote investment in primary care? Which links can be drawn by primary care practices between the community and the medical neighborhood? How can we entice patients, families and even employers to engage in improving care quality? And finally, how can we build an interprofessional health workforce trained and prepared to deliver high quality primary care in team-based settings.
