Data Mining and Pregnancy Prediction

By Katherine Kwong

Our private health decisions may not be as private as we’d like to think. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal revealed a potentially uncomfortable situation: employers using health care analytics companies to mine employees’ health data to determine which employees may be about to make certain health decisions.

While this type of data analytics can be used to predict a variety of health conditions (ranging from an increased risk of diabetes to back surgery to pregnancy), the most attention-grabbing example discussed was pregnancy. By obtaining permission to analyze employees’ medical information, companies such as Castlight are able to look at factors such as search queries and whether employees have been filling their birth control prescriptions to predict pregnancies. Some commentators expressed concerns that this type of information could be used by companies in improper ways. Read More

NHPC 2016: Provider Engagement Can Unify Diverse Payment Reform Efforts

By Cornelia Hall, Master of Public Policy Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School, Class of 2017

This is the first entry in a three-part series on the AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference, held in Washington, DC, on February 1-2, 2016. 

At AcademyHealth’s 2016 National Health Policy Conference earlier this month, payment reform was a pervasive theme.  Its prominence was not surprising.  Indeed, in early 2015, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced the agency’s goal to have 30% of traditional, fee-for-service Medicare payments tied to quality or value through alternative payment models by the end of 2016, and 50% by the end of 2018.  As the current sea change in health care moves the system towards these goals, the conference’s panelists explored various aspects of the transition to value-based payment. Speakers who discussed the issue included leaders in government, clinical practice, and private insurance.  They sent an overarching message that payment reform efforts will continue to take a variety of forms — on parallel tracks with cross-cutting themes — rather than a single approach.  Representatives from provider organizations particularly stressed the necessary groundwork for these efforts to be effective.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) under the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is operating dozens of payment- and quality-focused models and demonstrations across the country.  The breadth of payment models and their varying degrees of success represent different approaches to health care reform, such as population- and episode-based payment.  On his panel, CMMI Deputy Director Dr. Rahul Rajkumar noted that this breadth is designed to appeal to diverse providers that differ in type and readiness for payment reform.  Indeed, a health care system that has operated for decades with multiple payers, little care coordination, fragmented use of technology, and inconsistent definitions of quality care is undergoing monumental transformation.  The transition from fee-for-service to value-based payment thus involves some experimentation to identify the most effective approach. Read More