April 22, 2016 - Bill of Health

Heather Howard on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

April 22, 2016April 22, 2016 Nicolas P. Terry Leave a comment

This week we talked with Heather H. Howard, Lecturer in Public Affairs at Princeton University and Director of the State Health Reform Assistance Network. She served as New Jersey’s Commissioner of Health and Senior Services from 2008-2010, overseeing a cabinet-level agency with a budget of $3.5 billion and staff of 1,700 responsible for public health services, regulation of health care institutions, senior services, and health care policy and research.

Our lightning round “closed the loop” on some prior stories. Nic noted a big fine against a hospital which may end ER reality shows (or at least raise the price of their insurance policies), and a smaller action from OCR with a simple message: covered entities need to complete their BAAs! Prior show guest Nicholas Bagley offered an administrative end run around Gobeille. We also discussed the kaleidoscopic complexity of modern insurance markets.

Our conversation with Heather touched on her past, present, and future work on ACA 1332 waivers. If you care about innovation in state health policy, this podcast is for you.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in Health Law & Policy. Subscribe at iTunes, listen at Stitcher Radio, Tunein and Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app. Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find us on twitter @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale @WeekInHealthLaw

CPC+: Opportunities and Challenges for Primary Care Transformation

April 22, 2016April 22, 2016 michaelannekyle Leave a comment

In recent days there has been a lot of action around CMS’ Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative (CPCI). First, the next phase of the program was announced, expanding the program in size and scope. Several days later, an evaluation of the first two years of the initiative was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The original CPCI demonstration began in October 2012 and included 502 practices in seven regions (states or smaller areas within states). The regions were determined largely by payer interest, as commercial and state health insurance plans are essential partners in this multi-payer model. The CPCI involves risk-stratified care management fees for participating practices and the possibility of sharing in net savings to Medicare (if any). In turn, the practices must invest in practice redesign around: access and continuity, chronic disease management, risk-stratified care management, patient and caregiver engagement, and care coordination across a patient’s providers, e.g., managing care transitions and ensuring close communication and collaboration.

REGISTER NOW! 2016 Annual Conference: Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics

April 22, 2016April 22, 2016 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

2016 Annual Conference:
Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics
May 6, 2016
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East ABC
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

“Big Data” is a phrase that has been used pervasively by the media and the lay public in the last several years. While many definitions are possible, the common denominator seems to include the “three V’s” – Volume (vast amounts of data), Variety (significant heterogeneity in the type of data available in the set), and Velocity (speed at which a data scientist or user can access and analyze the data).

Defined as such, health care has become one of the key emerging use cases for big data. For example, Fitbit and Apple’s ResearchKit can provide researchers access to vast stores of biometric data on users from which to test hypotheses on nutrition, fitness, disease progression, treatment success, and the like. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have vast stores of billing data that can be mined to promote high value care and prevent fraud; the same is true of private health insurers. And hospitals have attempted to reduce re-admission rates by targeting patients that predictive algorithms indicate are at highest risk based on analysis of available data collected from existing patient records. Read More