The Collaborative Forum

Just a few weeks ago, the American Heart Association (AHA) released a scientific statement, State of the Science: Promoting Self-Care in Persons with Heart Failure: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association, that discusses the importance of patient self-care (PSC) and provides evidence-based recommendations to clinicians to promote self-care in their heart failure (HF) patients. The AHA placed significant emphasis on teaching patients how to recognize condition symptoms and what to do with that information, how to make appropriate behavior changes and the importance of transitions of care and depression screening.  In addition, the statement acknowledged that systems of care, such as care coordination and telehealth, hold promise for improving the self-care abilities of persons with HF.

Clearly, this set of recommendations resonates with us at Pharos Innovations. These recommendations are directly aligned with the paradigm of physician- and patient-centric care coordination that we created with Tel-Assurance^®.  The AHA recommendations are all about accountability: the patient’s as well as the physician’s. Accountability brings better results with healthier patients and reduced hospital readmission rates—both which on the face of it, are great things.

Unfortunately, our healthcare delivery system, as currently designed, is not set up to maximize patient and physician accountability. Specifically, in the way healthcare providers are currently incented for the quantity of care, not the quality. The good news is that this is changing. Read the rest of this entry →

I have recently returned from the DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance’s annual trade association meeting in San Diego and have had time to reflect on what I saw and learned. By way of background for those not familiar with the Care Continuum Alliance’s Annual Forum, this meeting assembles arguably the best and most established companies and thought leaders in the field of chronic disease and wellness. No, not necessarily policy wonks, nor highly published academic researchers. But rather the folks who over the past decade have built a multi-billion dollar industry from scratch while improving the lives of countless individuals and the profitability of their customers.

As a newly appointed member of The Care Continuum Alliance’s board, I am humbled by the great minds working together to solve our healthcare crisis. In years past, I have witnessed many call-outs of the problem and seen many potential solutions arise. Notably, one major element has been missing from the solution — collaboration. This year is different. I walked away with the sense that our industry is finally in agreement that change is needed – that what has been is not sustainable in the future – and that collaboration is the key to that change. I also walked away with the keen sense that the DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance is a catalyst to help us move in that direction.

I am excited for the work ahead of me and The Care Continuum Alliance’s board as we help guide this movement.There were three other key themes that marked this year’s meeting, which I’d like to explore. These themes, to an outside observer, might seem unrelated in many ways. But my sense is that taken together, they represent an important milestone in the healthcare industry, perhaps even a pattern – one that appears to represent nothing short of a seismic shift. Read the rest of this entry →

Vince’s post begs the question: “So…if one were to redesign the MMHD to fulfill the potential for both improving care quality (through access to an appropriate “Medical Home”) while simultaneously reducing healthcare costs, where might we start?”

Vince points us in the right direction in his post, calling our attention to the work of Randall Brown in his report of another CMS demonstration, the Care Coordination Demonstration. Brown points out two key observations:

1. Care Coordination, to save money, must start with the “right” population target; and,

2. Care Coordination interventions can only save money if they don’t COST more than about $120 per participant per month (the amount likely to be saved from a well-designed intervention).

In other words, the solution to the dilemma has two aspects: 1. FOCUS and 2. EXECUTION. Read the rest of this entry →