Day: November 4, 2015

Finally, a Final Rule on Advance Care Planning

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In a victory for common sense, good policy, and good care, reimbursement for end-of-life counseling was safely tucked into the 2016 Medicare Payment Rules issued by CMS last Friday. The calm adoption of advance care planning shows welcome progress from the “death panels” hysteria that plagued this sensible policy when it was first proposed six years ago. The list of advance care planning supporters is long, including: numerous physician organizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institutes of Medicine, the American Hospital Association, and over 80 percent of Americans. So, what is advanced care planning and why does it matter?

Given the circus that originally surrounded it, people may be surprised to learn that this policy simply involves the addition of two billable codes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. The first code, 99497, covers an initial 30-minute consultation on end-of-life planning, with a second, 99498, covering 30 additional minutes, if needed. Importantly, patients do not need to be seriously ill to access this benefit – a consultation can be scheduled at any time, for example, as part of an annual physical. During this meeting, patients discuss the kind of interventions they would want if they become critically ill, or as they approach the end of life. Such conversations enable collaboration between the patient, family, and medical team – it opens the door for an ongoing dialogue about priorities and goals of care (which may evolve over time).

Planning for the end of life matters because advances in medicine have created a dizzying array of interventions and palliative care options for people who are gravely ill. There are many clinical and psychosocial benefits to communicating one’s preferences around end of life care. In a September 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 89 percent of respondents said doctors should discuss end-of-life plans with patients – but only 17 percent had actually had such a discussion with their doctor. Formal recognition of the value of advance care planning is an important step in encouraging more patients and doctors to initiate the conversation.

The Ongoing Push for E-Cigarette Regulations

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By Katherine Kwong

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics publicly joined the group of advocates for federal regulations on e-cigarettes. The AAP urged the government to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to everyone under age 21 and prohibit advertising to minors, and advocated for high taxes on e-cigarette products similar to those on other tobacco products. In its announcement, the AAP cited developing brains’ vulnerability to nicotine and the potential harms to long-term health as reasons for its recommendations to keep e-cigarettes away from youths. It also recommended that smoke-free laws governing secondhand smoke explicitly include e-cigarettes, saying, “[t]he aerosol emitted from e-cigarettes is not harmless; it contains a variety of toxic chemicals, including some carcinogens and significant amounts of nicotine.”

A recently released poll found that a majority of Americans (57%) believe e-cigarettes should be regulated like tobacco products, while less than 25% of respondents felt they should not be. The Food and Drug Administration proposed e-cigarette regulations in 2014, and recently sent the regulations to the Office of Management and Budget for review. While the final form of the regulations is still unknown, the proposal banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and required e-cigarette labels include a list of ingredients and a disclosure that they contain nicotine.

There is growing concern about the potential health risks posed by e-cigarettes. Advocates for restrictions on e-cigarettes have long warned that unregulated e-cigarettes frequently expose users to the harmful effects of nicotine, as well as toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, benzene, and other carcinogens. There have also been warnings about the risk that e-cigarette use may lead to greater social acceptance of smoking and higher rates of tobacco use. (Despite frequent claims that e-cigarettes may help with smoking cessation, longitudinal studies consistently find no evidence that e-cigarette use increases quitting rates.) Anecdotal evidence has linked e-cigarette use to pneumonia and other lung problems. Forty percent of e-cigarette users reported having health concerns about their use.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Physician Coverage under the ACA

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By Elizabeth Guo

A recent study in JAMA by Dorner, Jacobs, and Sommers released some good and bad news about provider coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The study examined whether health plans offered on the federal marketplace in 34 states offered a sufficient number of physicians in nine specialties. For each plan, the authors searched for the number of providers covered under each specialty in each state’s most populous county. Plans without specialist physicians were labeled specialist-deficient plans. The good: roughly 90% of the plans covered more than five providers in each specialty. The bad: 19 plans were specialist-deficient and 9 of 34 states had at least one specialty deficient plan. Endocrinology, psychiatry, and rheumatology were the most commonly excluded specialties.

Here’s where it gets ugly.

Excluding certain specialists from coverage can be a way for insurers to discriminate against individuals with certain conditions by excluding them from their plans. By excluding rheumatologists, insurers may prevent enrolling individuals with rheumatoid arthritis; by excluding endocrinologists, insurers may prevent enrolling individuals with diabetes. Individuals with chronic conditions need to see specialists more frequently than healthier adults, and how easily a patient with chronic conditions can see a specialist can affect his health care outcomes.

The study adds to the growing body of empirical research showing that even after the ACA, insurers may be structuring their plans to potentially discriminate against individuals with significant chronic conditions. In January, Jacobs and Sommers published a study showing that some plans were discriminating against patients with HIV/AIDS through adverse tiering by placing all branded and generic HIV/AIDS drugs on the highest formulary tier. Another study found that 86% of plans place all medicines in at least one class on the highest cost-sharing tier. These studies show that despite being on a health plan, individuals with certain chronic conditions may still have trouble accessing essential treatments and services. Read More

Introducing Blogger Robert Kinscherff

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The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD to the Bill of Health as our newest contributor!

Robert Kinscherff is the 2015-2016 Senior Fellow in Law and Neuroscience at the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center. Dr. Kinscherff is a forensic and clinical psychologist and an attorney who has been on the faculty at William James College since 1999, where he is Associate Vice President for Community Engagement with oversight of key clinical service-providing programs. He is also Teaching Faculty in the Doctoral Clinical Psychology Program and for the Doctoral School Psychology Program at William James College, Faculty at the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, and Senior Associate for the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. He is a member of the Massachusetts legislative Special Commission on Sexual Offender Recidivism and designee member for the Administrative Office of the Juvenile Court for the legislative Committee to Develop an Evaluation Process in Cases of Homicide by Juveniles. Kinscherff has previously served as Assistant Commissioner for Forensic Mental Health (MA Department of Mental Health), Director of Juvenile Court Clinic Services (MA Trial Court), and Director of Adult Forensic Services (Psychiatry and Law Program, MGH). For over a decade, he taught classes at the intersection of law and psychology at Boston University Law School. For the American Psychological Association, he is a current member of the Board of Professional Affairs, and has served as Chair of the APA Gun Violence Policy Review Task Force, a past two-term Chair of the Ethics Committee (EC), Chair of the Committee on Legal Issues (COLI) and Member of the Committee on Professional Practices and Standards (COPPS). His research and professional practice areas include legal, ethical, and professional practice issues in clinical and forensic mental health practice, violence risk assessment and management, juvenile homicide, aggressive and sexually problematic behaviors among youth and adults with developmental or mental disorders, and severe and unusual forms of child maltreatment. His many publications include the co-authored book APA Ethics Code: Commentary and Case Illustrations (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 2009) and more recent publications on topics including mental health practice in juvenile justice contexts, special ethical and practice considerations in work with juvenile and violent offenders, and international human rights law implications for forensic psychologists of the 2012 US Supreme Court case of Miller v. Alabama regarding mandatory life imprisonment without possibility of parole for offenses committed as a juvenile.