An overview of the changes, trends, and newsmakers from the past month
The rise of bundled payments, the fall of meaningful use, and a time for post-acute care to shine: April of this year has been an interesting month for healthcare. Here’s the news that’s caught our interest this month:
Industry news
- Positive admissions growth a fluke?: While 2015 saw an unprecedented rise in organic growth in inpatient admissions, don’t expect that growth to become a trend, say the analysts at FitchRatings.
- The continuing saga of meaningful use: After years of drama and hand wringing from industry stakeholders, federal health authorities last week announced an initiative to replace meaningful use requirements with parts of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).
- Make the most of bundled payments: As value-based care becomes more prevalent, many forward leaning organizations are daring to take on the risk associated with bundled payments to try to maximize their savings and improve the quality of their care. HealthAffairs offers some great tips for those taking on bundled payments.
New innovations
- Healthcare, aviation, and predictive analytics: According to one industry analyst, the futures of healthcare and aviation look a lot alike, as predictive analytic and system-wide collaboration take hold.
- New views of the patient experience: While some doctors are getting burned by bad Yelp reviews, others industry leaders are using it as a tool to gain unprecedented insight on the state of self-reported patient experiences.
- The mind-body link: An innovative new school in East Palo Alto, California, will be offering free education to its students, and free healthcare to its students’ families, in hopes of promoting better, more accessible care.
Post-acute care
- Post-acute care and pop health success: As population health becomes a more powerful driver for success—and payments—in healthcare, post-acute care networks have the potential to help control costs.
- Hospitalists push their way to post-acute: Post-acute subspecialists are doing all they can to help reduce readmissions through more effectively coordinated care.
Pop health and alternative payments
- Alternative payments will soon be normal payments: HealthAffairs breaks down the new landscape of alternative payment models, and offers insight on what we consider alternative today might be normal tomorrow.
- The power of pop health: The results of a recent survey from Premier, Inc., show that population health and ACA are having the biggest impact on their ability to deliver care, while healthcare IT continues to be where most heath systems project their largest investment.
- And the best ACO model is…: Despite some early stumbles of the CMS ACO model, the next gen approach is likely to become the cornerstone of CMS’ alternative payment plan in the coming years.
