Roji Intel Blog

Theresa Hush 0
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ACOsFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
August 29, 2018

Time Out

It's the last week of August, the run-up to Labor Day, and time to re-energize as we head into a period that promises even more intense health care reform. We at Roji Health Intelligence wish you a relaxing end of summer and a chance to recharge before we're all back in the fall fray. For those of you who would like to use a little vacation time to catch up on some reading, here are links to content that will come in handy as CMS continues to ratchet up the pressure on ACOs to assume risk: Download our free eBook, How…
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Theresa Hush 0
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ACOsConsumers & PatientsFuture of Health CareMedical Decision-Making
August 22, 2018

How ACOs Can Leverage Price Transparency To Create Value for Consumers

Health care consumers are being forced to assume a greater share of costs for treatment. But how can patients determine the value of health care services if they can’t compare costs? Lack of price transparency is a major obstacle to value-based medical decisions. In evaluating treatment options or services by different providers, consumers have no reliable means to monetize their choices. They are powerless to do anything about it—as yet. But that may well change as ACOs adapt to downside risk. Price transparency is a tool that exclusively benefits consumers, because health plans already, obviously, know the prices they negotiated…
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Dave Halpert 0
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ACOsFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
August 15, 2018

Proposed ACO Final Rule: 10 Essential Takeaways from “Pathways to Success”

The Final Rule for the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) Accountable Care Organization (ACO)  has been released, the first real revision since the program’s inception. Introducing the proposed rule, CMS stated that it is time to put real ‘accountability’ in Accountable Care Organizations, and this means that ACOs need to accept financial risk. The theme behind Pathways to Success is to end the one-sided risk model. ACO Savings Success Was Zero-to-Limited Under the Savings-Only Model Although ACOs were supposed to curb healthcare spending, data released earlier this year showed that CMS actually spent $384 million more, rather than saving $1.7…
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Robert McNutt, M.D. 0
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Consumers & PatientsMedical Decision-MakingResearch
August 8, 2018

Why Randomized Clinical Trials Are Essential to Informed Medical Decisions

I am not a card-carrying philosopher, although I did study philosophy as my undergraduate major. What I enjoyed most was epistemology, the theory of knowledge. We debated, hotly, from the standpoints of social interaction and humanism, “What is knowledge? What constitutes knowing?” But such philosophical debates are not relevant in medical care. Medicine is not a philosophical province. By that I mean that when we are ill, we are philosophically the same; debating differences is a waste of time. We have equal value; have the same rights to the same efforts and same actions to get us better. The essential…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Bundled PaymentsFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
August 1, 2018

Five Steps for Successful Initiation of Bundled Payments and Episodes of Care

Everything about health care is complicated—its rules, science, service delivery, organizational systems, financing, and the relationship between all participants. So too will be the solutions for measuring and managing its value as determined by quality, outcomes and cost. To imagine that we can simply change one part of health care and effect change throughout the entire system is naïve, even ridiculous. Nonetheless, a recent analysis of how bundled payments failed to lower costs is being used as an example of why such reimbursements aren’t effective in changing incentives for high medical costs. While the analytical results show little difference in…
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