Population Health
Because physicians who treat addiction don't necessarily have experience with surgery or access to sterile spaces, some are having to learn a new skill and develop new systems.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has named the hospitals that will participate in their Frontier Community Health Integration Project Demonstration, also known as FCHIP, an initiative meant to increase access to healthcare in rural areas.
Premier Inc. is joining forces with America's Essential Hospitals, which champions care for vulnerable populations, in a bid to improve quality, cost and population health at its member hospitals.
A report in 2012 by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse revealed that medical schools devoted little time to teaching addiction medicine -- only a few hours over four years. Since then, the number of Americans overdosing from prescribed opioids has surpassed 14,000 per year, quadrupling from 1999 to 2014.
CMS estimates that up to 5,000 primary care practices serving an estimated 3.5 million beneficiaries could participate in the model.
Experts estimate that about half of all people turning 65 today will need daily help as they age, either at home or in nursing homes. Such long-term care will cost an average of about $91,000 for men and double that for women, because they live longer.
In one of the first looks at privately insured patients with opioid problems, researchers paint a grim picture: Medical services for people with opioid dependence diagnoses skyrocketed more than 3,000 percent between 2007 and 2014. The study considers a huge cohort of people who have either job-based insurance or buy coverage on their own.
Despite the high cost of specialty drugs driving up expenditures, Medicare Part D prescription drug plan premiums are projected to rise by only about $1.50 over the average premium last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Friday.
The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded $3 million to researchers at Montefiore Medical Group, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center in an effort to curb HIV rates in the Bronx, a borough in New York with one of the highest HIV rates in the country.
Their findings are important because, under the health law, services that the task force assigns an "A" or "B" grade must generally be covered by health plans, including Medicare, without charging consumers anything out of pocket.