When the covid-19 pandemic swept the country in early 2020 and emptied doctors’ offices nationwide, telemedicine was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Patients and their physicians turned to virtual visits by video or phone rather than risk meeting face-to-face. During the early months of the pandemic, telehealth visits for care exploded. “It was a dramatic shift…
Congress should focus on advancing value-based care by investing in proper infrastructure, incentivizing patient engagement, and supporting continuous telehealth coverage, according to the American Medical Group Association (AMGA). The organization sent a letter to congressional leaders expressing appreciation for their efforts to support healthcare providers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the letter urged leaders to improve the Medicare program…
“Return” has become a popular word across the globe of late. Return to the office, return to travel, return to going out to eat and sporting events, return to our pre-COVID lives…the list goes on. As our world adjusts to the new normal, the healthcare industry is moving beyond emergency triage to managing today’s top challenges,…
Nathan Moore, M.D., medical director of the BJC Medical Group ACO in St. Louis, sees annual wellness visits (AWVs) as a scaffolding for all of the ACO’s improvement efforts. “We’re using this as our point of entry for advanced care planning and for functional status evaluations,” he said. Moore was speaking during an April 28…
This week, a group of senior officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), some from the Center for Medicare, some from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI, also called The Innovation Center) authored an op-ed in the Perspectives section of The New England Journal of Medicine online, in which they outline their…
Nathan Moore, M.D., medical director of the BJC Medical Group ACO in St. Louis, sees annual wellness visits (AWVs) as a scaffolding for all of the ACO’s improvement efforts. “We’re using this as our point of entry for advanced care planning and for functional status evaluations,” he said. Moore was speaking during an April 28…
Two years into the global COVID-19 phenomenon, it’s become very clear that patient care organizations in the United States have taken a big financial hit from the pandemic. Not only has caring for COVID-19 patients turned out to be extremely expensive, the pandemic has also scrambled hospital operations in particular, as numerous nurses, physicians, and…
You’ll recall that we ran a long piece (pt 1, pt 2) about Medicare Advantage from former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson earlier this year. Here’s a somewhat related piece from the current head of The Permanente Medical Group about what actually happened there and elsewhere during the pandemic–Matthew Holt The COVID-19 pandemic has provided…
After nearly a year of health equity work, Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said the department will continue to make justice in the medical space a top priority. “Dr. King famously called injustice in health the most inhumane and shocking form of inequality,” Becerra began in a keynote address during…
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) though by no means a new care modality is evolving rapidly, spurred by the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding regulatory push to expand access to care. In its simplest form, RPM involves the use of connected electronic tools to record personal health and medical data in one location…