Value Delivery System 

Summary

Introduction

• The health care network includes key points of evolution:
• Players argue ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  is transforming power - insurers merging: Aetna/Humana, Anthem/Cigna; hospitals attacked by high street clinics: Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreens (Sep 2015)
  
• Judges block Humana+Aetna & Cigna+Anthem insurer mergers (Feb 2017)
• ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  and competitive pressures encourage payer include four types:
  • From the 1930s the insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield catalyzed health care activity by paying a daily per diem to hospitals for the diagnoses and treatments the hospital's dispensed.  At their inception in 1966 Medicare and Medicaid followed this reimbursement model. 
  • From 1983 Medicare and Medicaid switched to the PPS reimbursement mechanism.  This forced alignment of the supplier, diagnosis, treatment, billing and reimbursement processes.  The health care network is still structurally aligned around PPS.  Under scrutiny of ProPAC and its successor MedPAC,  as well as pressure of the BBA after 1997, the payments per DRG have been steadily reduced until it was below the cost of care, forcing hospitals to seek margin from their other payers.  Medicare outlier payments benefited hospitals that inflated charges and thus became eligible. 
    
  • Employers as they experienced cost shifting from the hospital's increased product charges moved their employees over to managed care based payment. 
  • Private payers pay hospitals directly for their diagnosis and treatment.  Typically this group has little power.  There are default rates for private payers - typically 40% of billed charges that are not covered by a fixed payment or a fee schedule.  For the uninsured poor until 2004 they obtained little discount on the hospital's chargemaster list price, because insurers and CMS required to be charged the lowest value offered to any patients.  Medicare has now relaxed this constraint. 
  -delivery integration across the health care spectrum: UnitedHealth, Anthem CVS: IngenioRX PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  , Aetna: Inova, Banner Health; Cleveland clinic: Oscar; (Nov 2017)
  
• Hedge fund is an investment fund that accepts investments from a limited number of accredited individual or institutional investors.  Hedge funds are able to use investment methods that are not allowed for other types of fund. 
  Glenview Capital sells off Hospital Corporation of America & Health Management Associates, but still suffers from investments in hospitals: Tenet; that have added debt from acquisitions but lost customers to outpatient treatment and HDHP is a high-deductible health plan which has lower premiums and a higher deductable than traditional health insurance plan such as a HMO plan or PPO plan. 
  pressure (Sep 2017)
  
• Major hospital systems is the owner of a set of hospitals and other owned infrastructure and employer of direct staff.  :  Dignity + Catholic Health Initiatives, Ascension, Advocate + Aurora; plan mergers; Tenet & Community Health sell off poor performing hospitals & shift further to outpatient services.  All are hoping to capture patient base before new entrents: UnitedHealth, CVS Health, Amazon; can.  And scale may help with margin & HCIT is health care information technology.  The AHRQ argues HCIT consists of a complex set of technologies, policies, standards and user sets.  Technically they represent it as a set of layers: Application: CPOE, CDS, e-prescribing, eMAR, Results reporting, Electronic documentation, Interface engines, etc.; Communication: Messaging standards (HL7, ADT, NCPDP, X12, DICOM, ASTM, etc,) Coding standards (LOINC, ICD10, CPT, NDC, RxNorm, SNOMED CT, etc.), Process: HIE, MPI, HIPAA security & privacy, etc.; Device: Tablet and PC, ASP, PDAs, Bar Coding, etc.; 
  costs.  UnitedHealth's Optum purchases the Advisory Board.  Republican tax law suggests reduced funding of: ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  , Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  & Medicaid is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  ; will all be further impacting revenue to hospitals (Dec 2017)
  
• NYT/UC Berkeley study finds prices rise after hospital mergers, since these: reduce competition, raise price of admission, undermine quality; with major groups: Baylor Scott, CHI Franciscan Health, Dignity, Hartford, Memorial Hermann, Phoebe Putney Health System, Sutter Health, West Virginia University Medicine, Yale New Haven Health; integrating other hospitals and especially physician groups (Nov 2018)
• UnitedHealth purchases standalone surgery center Surgical Care Affiliates for Optum's OptumCare (Jan 2017)
• Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase partnership aims to disrupt health care; leveraging their combined consumer choice & health insurance knowledge to enable technology to simplify care.  (Jan 2018)
  
• Analysts: Berkeley, Harvard, NorthWestern; doubt they will achieve their goals (Jan 2018) or suggest the impact will be limited or adverse for other Americans: Kaiser Health News; (Feb 2018) 
• Comcast keeps health care costs to 1% growth (instead of 3% average of large employers) with an innovative go it alone approach to health benefits, helped by Venrock and Comcast ventures portfolio companies: Accolade health benefit navigators, Grand Rounds for second opinions, Doctors On Demand for tele-health is the use of remote health care.  It includes telepharmacy and clinical telehealth for stroke and psychiatry.  It also includes sessions between primary care providers and patients and assisted caregiving such as medication reminders and DME usage monitors. 
  , Brightside, which helps employees manage their finances, is a startup which Comcast Ventures created; for its 225,000 employees - although many of its workers are contractors.  NBGH vets the startups for its members.  Some large companies cover the costs of health care for their employees, but most use insurers to do paperwork, and contract with hospitals and doctors.  It can be hard for the partners to get data from the insurers.  Fidelity Investments is large enough to make insurers cooperate.  Companies and employees are unhappy with the regular service (Sep 2018)
• RWJ funded RAND study, of 1,598 hospital treatment's insurance claims, shows Parkwiew Health, in Indiana, charges private insurers 4 * its Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  prices.  States paying the most are: Indiana, Wyoming, Maine, Wisconsin, Montana, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Washington; on average hospitals charge 2.4 * Medicare prices to private health insurance patients.  Outpatient care was 3 * Medicare pricing; angering employers.  Employers say they must exert discipline on health care costs: will gather data on prices and quality to decide on the best strategy: single-payer is a healthcare architecture in which there is a single financing organization.  Significant aspects of single-payer include:
  • Strengths of single-payer:
  • Removes the extensive replication of payer organizations and their different interfaces to the other healthcare entities and subscribers. 
    
  • One payment organization, removing the need to allow subscribers the yearly choice to change payer, encouraging payers to help subscribers remain healthy
    
  • Single-payer instantiates a political monopoly on health insurance. 
    
  • Problematic implementation of single-payer in the US
    
  • Undermines the alignment of the healthcare network, threatening profits, power structures and financial rewards.  This limits the possibility of single-payer in the US: Lobbying juggernaut: Politicians, Providers, Doctors, Insurers; leveraging dislike of tax increases, The 9 out of 10 Americans who are employed or retired are satisfied with their situation, Current insurance costs are hidden from the insured: in lowered pay packages, spread over all tax payers reducing government revenues; Current private insurers would be forced to reduce costs;
  • Alters one sixth of the US economy: Commercial health insurance replaced, investors impacted by transformation of business models; a huge change of high uncertainty, something evolution works to avoid by including mechanisms to force small incremental changes. 
    
  • A state: Vermont (Jan 2014); can use public funds for all health care financing while the delivery of care is provided by non-state organizations.  Analogously Intermountain Healthcare's SelectHealth Share requires organizations to use Intermountain for health care finance (Feb 2016). 
    
  , focus on best value hospitals;  Insurers are not incented to keep prices down when working for self-insured companies - where insurers are spending the companies money and make more revenue when the company spends more.  Anthem claims narrow networks - When all health insurance plans are comparable on line people are expected to choose narrower less costly plans.  This has the effect of encouraging providers and PCP to compete to be part of the narrow plan by reducing their charges and driving down the prices of the plans.  By limiting the number of providers/doctors offered in the plans the few that are included should get more business.  Across the US in 2015 39% of health plans offered in public exchanges are narrow (30 - 70% of areas providers) or ultra-narrow (30% or less of providers).  In large cities narrow networks are even more common.  Typically if consumers go outside of the choices offered in their narrow network they will be responsible for the high bills.  There are problems induced by narrow network constraints:
  • Queuing issues - while a surgeon and a hospital may be in-network other agents in an operation, such as anesthesiologists or anesthetists, may not have the same set of insurance contracts.  Even if a subset do, once these are allocated to a task the hospital must then manage a complex set of resource constraints to keep its ORs running.  If it does this by ignoring the 'out of network' status of these necessary resources the patient will be impacted by a high bill.  
  • Success is more likely when the plan maintains a broad list of PCPs but a narrow list of specialists and hospitals (Oct 2016). 
    
  of hospitals is its direction to drive down prices.  One-third of all healthcare spending goes to hospital care.  Hospitals are buying physician practices is physician practice management.  This consolidation of PCP practices was partly a response to Wall Street's capitalization of HMOs and hospitals in early 1990s.  As Wall Street switched to financing PPMs, enabling Medpartners's purchase of Mullikin Inc., hospitals responded by buying up the PPMs.  Most PPMs struggled to control costs in the capitated care framework of the 1990s.  Some of these PPMs shifted to become PBMs. 
  and spending on new facilities.  Hospitals (AHA is the American_hospital association. 
  ) argue they lose money on Medicare and Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  , so the comparison is biased (May 2019)
  
• Cigna acquires PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  Express Scripts for $52 billion (Mar 2018)
  
• Customer value chain structure is key to fixing incentive issues driving up health care costs.  The key aspects are:
• Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH is patient centered medical homes:
  • Describes a reorganization of the health care delivery system to focus on the patient and care giver supported by EHR infrastructure and some form of process management which will be necessary to coordinate interventions by each of the functional entities resources to treat the patients specific problems.   The disadvantage of a PCMH is the administrative and technology cost needed to support its complex processes.  The PCMH
    
  • Was promoted as a way to incent more PCP which had been seen as a low reward role by medical students.  HCI3 argues this use of PCMH is flawed.  PCMH is driven by the medical home models of the ACA.  In this model the PCMH is accountable for meeting the vast majority of each patients physical and mental health care needs including prevention and wellness, acute care, and chronic care.  It is focused on treating the whole person.  It is tasked with coordinating the care across all elements of the health care system, including transitions and building clear and open communications.  It must ensure extended access and availability of its services and patients preferences about access.  It must continuously improve quality by monitoring evidence-based medicine and clinical decision support tools (NCQA).  Many argue that to be effective it must be connected to a 'medical neighborhood'.  The PCMH brings together the specialized resources and infrastructure required to develop and iteratively maintain the care plans and population oriented system descriptions that are central to ACA care coordination. 
    
   
  ) 
• Care coordination aims to transfer information between the patient and each care participant as required and establish accountability by defining who is responsible for each care delivery activity, the extent of that responsibility and when that responsibility will be transferred to other care participants or the patient and family.  Successful care coordination requires face-to-face interactions.  It also requires aligned incentives (ACO, Bundled payments).  AHRQ defines quality measures for care coordination.  The situation is usually complex and adaptive due to the interactions of all the providers, settings, the patients' preferences, and the number of physical health problems, treatments, and the patients' social situation.  The potentially exponential increase in complexity as the number of these factors present increases leads to patient hot spots requiring explicit proactive coordination of care.  It is argued that care coordination must include six specific activities:
  1. Determination and updating of care coordination needs: Needs assessment should identify preferences and goals, current situation and past history.  It needs to be updated periodically and after new diagnosis and other changes in health or functional status. 
     
  2. Creation and updating of proactive plan of care
     
  3. Communication
  4. Facilitation of transitions: typical transition problems are detailed by Project Boost.  A challenging issue with transitions is what to do when there is no resource to take over the coordination role in the handoff. 
     
  5. Connection to community resources: Community resources are any service or program outside the health care system that may support a patient's health and wellness. 
     
  6. Alignment of resources with population needs: need to see the system-level, assess the needs of populations to identify and address gaps in services.  
  must allow the PCP is a Primary Care Physician.  PCPs are viewed by legislators and regulators as central to the effective management of care.  When coordinated care had worked the PCP is a key participant.  In most successful cases they are central.  In certain Medicare ACO models (Pioneer) PCPs are committed to achieve meaningful use requirements.  Working against this is the: replacement of diagnostic skills by technological solutions, low FFS leverage of the PCP compared to specialists, demotivation of battling prior authorization for expensive treatments. 
  to integrate the whole health system to support effective care for individuals and the whole served population.  But that involves key, powerful constituents like the hospitals and surgeons.  Already SMH is a specialty medical home is a certified PCMH focused on improving the health of a population that requires specialized on-going care.   It is strategically at odds with the goals of the PCMH since these specialists are aiming to reduce the power of the PCP.  The NCQA and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are developing standards for certifying SMH. 
  are being standardized which will improve the market position of specialists such as orthopedists is the treatment of the musculoskeletal system which supports multi-cell higher animals and allows them to move about: including correcting deformities, breaks, tears, compression, tendonitis, disc failures, misalignment, fusion to treat damaged discs. 
  relative to PCPs.  
• Mount Sinai Health's Koufman laments the specialists' stranglehold (Jun 2017)
• Bundled operations - to induce a virtual Kaiser Permanente.  To succeed these must focus on PHM is population health management.  It aims to use big data to extend the EHR infrastructure to provide cost effective personal treatment.  This implies reengineering the health care payment and delivery process.  
  • IT tools must be developed. 
    
  • Administrative structures must be updated. 
    
  • Clinical processes must be redesigned and accepted.  Successful workflow process reengineering will depend on integration with existing workflows and presence of added value! 
    
  • Payment mechanisms must be overhauled ensuring that the physicians get incented to move on from FFS.  
  • It must be financed.  It is not obvious where this will come from!  Providers like fixed costs.  ROI seems limited atleast initially.  Subscriptions may work for both vendors and providers. 
    
  with the intent of proactively reducing the need for acute care.  Intermountain Health's SelectHealth Share achieves this.  CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   incentives include its advanced payment ACO is a CMS Innovation center has developed a model of an ACO for physician-owned and rural providers participating in the Shared Savings Program who would benefit from additional start-up resources to build the necessary infrastructure, such as new staff or information technology systems.  , APM is alternative payment model, Medicare's risk based payments to organizations set up as ACOs.  It includes track 1 ACOs which are not risk bearing.  APMs have to report various measures to CMS. 
  and advanced APM is a CMS regulated group of APMs that effectively uses FFV.  The list includes: Risk-bearing ACOs, Comprehensive end stage renal disease care, Comprehensive primary care plus, Oncology care model. 
  payment models.  Bundled operations involve:
  
• Primary care physicians (PCP is a Primary Care Physician.  PCPs are viewed by legislators and regulators as central to the effective management of care.  When coordinated care had worked the PCP is a key participant.  In most successful cases they are central.  In certain Medicare ACO models (Pioneer) PCPs are committed to achieve meaningful use requirements.  Working against this is the: replacement of diagnostic skills by technological solutions, low FFS leverage of the PCP compared to specialists, demotivation of battling prior authorization for expensive treatments. 
  ),  
• Startup Aledade demonstrates a way to integrate the PCP is a Primary Care Physician.  PCPs are viewed by legislators and regulators as central to the effective management of care.  When coordinated care had worked the PCP is a key participant.  In most successful cases they are central.  In certain Medicare ACO models (Pioneer) PCPs are committed to achieve meaningful use requirements.  Working against this is the: replacement of diagnostic skills by technological solutions, low FFS leverage of the PCP compared to specialists, demotivation of battling prior authorization for expensive treatments. 
  with the health care network and lower costs (Aug 2017)
  
• Business model for individual PCP is a Primary Care Physician.  PCPs are viewed by legislators and regulators as central to the effective management of care.  When coordinated care had worked the PCP is a key participant.  In most successful cases they are central.  In certain Medicare ACO models (Pioneer) PCPs are committed to achieve meaningful use requirements.  Working against this is the: replacement of diagnostic skills by technological solutions, low FFS leverage of the PCP compared to specialists, demotivation of battling prior authorization for expensive treatments. 
  collapses under pressure from various large organizations executing acquisitions and mergers: Apple running own clinics for employees, Large hospitals setting up urgent care: HCA, Dignity Health, Northwell Health (GoHealth); CVS Health & Aetna, Wal-Mart & Humana, United Health employs 30,000 physicians and owns one of the  largest urgent care is an efficient and less costly 'alternative' to the ER.  There is no accepted standard.  Urgent care clinics also compete with Primary care based on extended hours and accessible locations including Medical Malls.  Most have a physician on staff and treat ailments like feavers, sprains and sinus and urinary tract infection, but they also can perform X-rays, stitch up cuts and set broken bones.  Unlike an ER they can not admit patients to a hospital.  Some also offer services like pre-employment drug screening and summer camp physicals. 
  groups (MedExpress); who can leverage employed PCP prescriptions for their PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  s, driving some PCPs to compete with urgent care: Healthy Now; and or leverage nurse practitioners, and others to explore One Medical & Aledade (Apr 2018)
  
• Acute care hospitals,  
• Emergency departments (ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  ) : Government is keen to shift all but catastrophic care from the ED to lower cost agencies: PCP, retail clinics, Urgent_care_clinics is an efficient and less costly 'alternative' to the ER.  There is no accepted standard.  Urgent care clinics also compete with Primary care based on extended hours and accessible locations including Medical Malls.  Most have a physician on staff and treat ailments like feavers, sprains and sinus and urinary tract infection, but they also can perform X-rays, stitch up cuts and set broken bones.  Unlike an ER they can not admit patients to a hospital.  Some also offer services like pre-employment drug screening and summer camp physicals. 
  , Mental health service; RAND finds it isn't happening (Mar 2016). 
  
• Research by Yale's Zack Cooper finds out-of-network  ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  doctors drive surprise billing is where a contracted service is used by a patient and the bill contains huge out-of-network charges from doctors who were consulting to the health care provider.  The opportunity to catalyze profits for: hospitals, physician staffing companies; while coping with rural E.D. staff shortages is encouraging this situation.  Examples include: E.D. billing (Nov 2016, Jul 2017)
  (Nov 2016)
• ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  pricing and surprise billing is where a contracted service is used by a patient and the bill contains huge out-of-network charges from doctors who were consulting to the health care provider.  The opportunity to catalyze profits for: hospitals, physician staffing companies; while coping with rural E.D. staff shortages is encouraging this situation.  Examples include: E.D. billing (Nov 2016, Jul 2017)
  issues associated with outsourced servicing provided by Envision's EmCare finds Yale's Zack Cooper. (Jul 2017)
• ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  pricing is a hospital controlled monopoly is a power relation within:
  
  • A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens.  If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society. 
    
  • An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage.  An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
    
  enabled by state laws requiring insurance to pay, even when there is no insurance contract.  Half of all hospital admissions are through the ED.  Billed charges is a hospital's undiscounted chargemaster bill for a procedure.  In the ED it will include a high facility fee, and each seperate procedure, which may be due to strategic billing, can be upcoded (1 - 5) depending on its complexity.  It is found that hospitals are increasingly upcoding to level 4 or 5 (serious auto accident) for provision of basic care.  While in-network insurance constrains the actual charges a hospital can make, the use of ED contract staff, not bound by the patients insurance contract with the hospital, can result in surprise billing. 
  have risen exceptionally.  Maryland has capped billed charges at 125% of contracted rates (Sep 2018)
  
• PAC provider is a Post-Acute Care provider.  A three-day hospital admission and discharge are prerequisite requirements to receiving Medicare PAC services.  Acute care hospitals become portals to the PAC business.  Referrals are key.  PAC includes different types of facility focused on different severity of illness (high to low):
  
  • Long term care Hospital (LTCH),
  • Inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF),
  • Skilled nursing facility (SNF),
  • Home health agency (HHA) - most acute care hospitals and EMR providers have strategies for integration with home based care,
    
  • Outpatient rehabilitation.  SNF and HHA represent 80% of discharges and expenditures.  Assisted living is not part of federal Medicaid, but states often include it through a waiver. 
    
  : Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  is interested in ensuring that hospitals effectively discharge acute patients to the most clinically and cost effective post-acute facility with minimal related readmissions.  Traditionally PAC providers benefit from maximizing referrals from acute hospitals and have little incentive to maximize treatment effectiveness.  The effect is illustrated in the historic situation with discharge described for UPMC's St Margaret's hospital to SNFs.  Such problems resulted in readmission to the acute hospital creating more revenue for all participants in the cycle under fee-for-service is fee-for-service payment.  For health care providers the high profits were made in hospitalizations, imaging and surgery.  Due to its inducing excessive treatment activity it may be replaced by FFV bundled payment.   (FFS) rules driving combined acute + PAC Medicare costs to grow 4.2% annually.  The cost growth is 5.5% per individual served with most of it occurring in skilled nursing facilities (SNF is skilled nursing facility. 
  )s!  The FFS transition from one care facility to another was typically poor. The strategies for integration include: vertical integration, joint ventures and outsourcing of PCP and PACs minimizing capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty.  Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital.  It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists.  It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital).   investment.  KLAS (2013) found current owners of rehabilitation centers plan to acquire more.  Otherwise plans are to affiliate rather than forward integrate. 
  
• Study by Stanford's Liran Einav, MIT is Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  's Amy Finkelstein & University of Chicago's Neale Mahoney, reports LTCH is a long-term care hospital.  The formal designation began as a congressional strategy to protect the 40 chronic disease hospitals from the impact of the original PPS being deployed to constrain costs in acute care hospitals in the 1980s.  A historic example San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is discussed in Victoria Sweet's God's Hotel.  LTCH PPS reimburses at far higher rates than the PPSs for other PAC providers.  Most of the more than 400 LTCHs are now operated by large for-profit health care networks: Select Medical.  LTCH's trade group is the NALTH. 
  market has expanded in response to high reimbursement is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  funds relative to other PAC providers is a Post-Acute Care provider.  A three-day hospital admission and discharge are prerequisite requirements to receiving Medicare PAC services.  Acute care hospitals become portals to the PAC business.  Referrals are key.  PAC includes different types of facility focused on different severity of illness (high to low):
  
  • Long term care Hospital (LTCH),
  • Inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF),
  • Skilled nursing facility (SNF),
  • Home health agency (HHA) - most acute care hospitals and EMR providers have strategies for integration with home based care,
    
  • Outpatient rehabilitation.  SNF and HHA represent 80% of discharges and expenditures.  Assisted living is not part of federal Medicaid, but states often include it through a waiver. 
    
  , but with no indication of improvements for patients over SNF is skilled nursing facility. 
  s.  Researchers conclude $5 billion could be saved yearly by using SNF reimbursement rates, agreeing with MedPAC is the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.  It was established by the BBA.  The mandate is to advise the U.S. Congress on payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and health providers with Medicare beneficiaries.  It produces two major reports each year for Congress.  's prior recommendations, but at odds with NALTH and Select Medical (Aug 2018)
  
• Fewer people are going to SNF is skilled nursing facility. 
  s.  Many facilities, even with Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  5 star ratings Star ratings are CMS quality ratings of health care domains.  They reflect measures of outcomes including intermediate outcomes, patient experience, access and process.  Care coordination (assessed by CAHPS survey) and quality improvement measures have been added.  Data is sourced from health and drug plans, from CMS contractors, from surveys of enrollees, and from CMS administrative data.  They reflect HEDIS data.   The ACA established Star Ratings as the basis of QBPs.  5-star health plans benefit from being able to market all year round, and beneficiaries can join at any time via a SEP.  Health plans with less than 3-star ratings can be terminated by CMS starting in 2015.  Star ratings cover 9 domains:
  • Ratings of health plans (part C)
  • Staying healthy: screening, tests, vaccines
    
  • Managing chronic (long-term) conditions
  • Member experience with the health plan
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the health plans performance
    
  • Health plan customer service
    
  • Ratings of drug plans (part D)
  • Drug plan customer service
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the drug plan's performance
    
  • Member experience with the drug plan
    
  • Patient safety and accuracy of drug pricing
    
  are closing.  At 70% occupancy, revenue from assisted living is an alternative to parents joining their children's nuclear family or entering a SNF, or Greenhouse Nursinghome.  Atul Gawande's Being Mortal describes the situation.  Federal Medicaid does not directly cover assisted living.  State Medicaid adds coverage through a federal waiver.  Congressional legislation covering assisted living is limited.  Assisted living providers are represented by the National Center for Assisted Living. 
  and independent residents, did not compensate for SNF losses, because of costly regulatory requirements: ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  hospital readmission have become a source of increased revenue for hospitals.  But with government interested in reducing the US health care cost curve ACA's HRRP (pay-for-performance), BPCI and CTI and Interact discharge initiative have all increased the focus on unnecessary readmissions.  Now the end-to-end process is under scrutiny with hospitals reengineering discharge (RED) and PAC providers using RAI and TCN. 
  penalties have driven many patients to be admitted to hospital as observation stays observation stays are inpatient like stays in hospital, except Medicare does not count the stay towards the qualification for SNF reimbursements and the copay for the observation may be considerable.  The volume of outpatient observation stays has been rising. 
  , where Medicare won't cover rehabilitation after discharge, More outpatient surgery is being performed, Medicare Advantage (MA) is a private provider administered health insurance plan providing access to Medicare benefits.  It was originally enacted as part of BBA Medicare + Choice or Part C plans.  The government funded the plan with an annual fee, based on age and severity of the subscriber's medical conditions, rather than FFS.  When a Medicare eligible person enrolls in a MA plan the government pays the private provider a set amount each month.  The participant pays the Medicare part B premium and if required a part C premium each month.  The MA plans offer a PCP who coordinates care.  And the plans have an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses unlike traditional Medicare.  When they obtain treatment they will have to pay a copayment which may be quite high for some specialists.  It is the health plan's responsibility to contract the physician network that will provide the care, leaving the risk with the insurer.  About 36% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled with Medicare Advantage by 2019.  The ACA introduced quality outcome and patient satisfaction based differential payments into MA.  To measure the performance it added a five-star quality rating scheme.  MA plans report their quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS annually and based on the results are awarded one to five stars.  The highest rated plans are provided with large additional payments.  It was assumed that subscribers would shift to the highest rated plans and the other plans would improve or drop out of MA.  And the ACA eliminated subsidies which the federal government used to establish Medicare Advantage.  However, the Obama administration has used a $8.5 Billion demonstration project to maintain this funding.  It is intended that it will eventually taper off so that the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage will be equivalent to standard Medicare. 
  plans seek lower cost alternatives, Patients seek other options when they can: assisted living, home care.  The 2005 DRA is the deficit reduction act of 2005.  It includes a critical imperative to CMS to develop a Medicare payment reform demonstration, using standardized patient information to examine consistency of payment incentives for various Medicare populations, treated in various settings.  As the 2006 budget reconciliation bill (S 1932) it included provisions expected to reduce Medicaid spending by $10 billion over 10 years.  Among the rules are:
  • Tighter restrictions on asset transfers.  Aims to reduce seniors transferring substantial amounts of their money and other assetts to relatives to be eligible for Medicaid funded long term care services.  Those with $500,000 or more in home equity would be automatically disqualified from applying for Medicaid. 
    
  • Greater flexibility to impose premiums and cost-sharing and to change benefit design for certain Medicaid beneficiaries.   
  • Gives all states long-term care partnership programs
  • Authorizes states to include home and community-based services as an optional Medicaid benefit.  
  allowed Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  to fund assisted living and home care alternatives to SNF care.  Most SNF businesses are at 82% occupancy.  These businesses will cut staffing to protect margins.  It is expected that as the baby boomers reach 80 the demand for SNF will rise again (Oct 2018)
  
• For profit nursing homes: Allenbrooke, Bruis Healthcare, Fairfield Nursing & Rehabilitation; purchased by private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  , private investors and public companies, are structured into LLCs with ownership and owned supply networks to extract profits and limit owner liabilities & taxes, but impacting quality and safety; a finding disputed by the American Health Care Association (Jan 2018)
  
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   pressure:
• Driving FFV is fee-for-value payment.  It may be a bundled payment for a set of services provided by a group of doctors and facilities, or full capitation.  In each case the risk has shifted from the payer to the providers of care. 
  transition forward for physicians with assistance from MACRA is Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 is designed to encourage physicians to move to FFV and to link Medicare payment to quality & value.  It alters the way Medicare pays for part B physician services encouraging physicians and other ECs to conform to one of two value based payment schemes: Advanced APMs (where the EC can become a QP) or MIPS.  MACRA does not apply to hospitals which have their own meaningful use.  MACRA is designed to promote transformation and includes: Data reporting by ECs, New practice models, Changing clinical standards, and Physician evaluations; with hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and bonuses.  It authorizes CMS to develop and deploy new rules.  It provides for PCPs in PCMHs to qualify as advanced APMs via a special lower risk pathway.  It replaced the problematic physician SGR formula. 
  .  The added expense of EHR refers to electronic health records which are a synonym of EMR.  EHR analysis suggests strengths and weaknesses:
  • The EHR provides an integrated record of the health systems notes on a patient including: Diagnosis and Treatment plans and protocols followed, Prescribed drugs with doses, Adverse drug reactions;
  • The EHR does not necessarily reflect the patient's situation accurately. 
    
  • The EHR often acts as a catch-all.  There is often little time for a doctor, newly attending the patient, to review and validate the historic details. 
    
  • The meaningful use requirements of HITECH and Medicare/Medicaid specify compliance of an EHR system or EHR module for specific environments such as an ambulatory or hospital in-patient setting. 
    
  • As of 2016 interfacing with the EHR is cumbersome and undermines face-to-face time between doctor and patient.  Doctors are allocated 12 minutes to interact with a patient of which less than five minutes was used for recording hand written notes.  With the EHR 12 minutes may be required to update the record!
    
  requirements may drive independent physicians out of business. 
  
• Health Management Associates investigated by government for alleged invalid increases in admissions via ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  relationships (2013) 
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   faces class action court case by: CMA, JIA, WSGR; on admissions policies for Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  and Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  ; Vidant's Greenville medical center observation means outpatient observation stay. 
  stay - not admission - restricts patients' access to Medicare reimbursed is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  SNF is skilled nursing facility. 
  (Sep 2017)
  
• Maryland sets up All-Payer is an annual, global hospital budget that includes inpatient and outpatient hospital services.  It operates under an agreement between Maryland and CMS that exempts Maryland hospitals from IPPS and OPPS.  The agreement requires Maryland:
  • Limit all-payer per capita inpatient and outpatient hospital cost growth to the previous 10-year growth in gross state product. 
    
  • Generate $330 million in savings to Medicare over 5 years comparing Maryland to the US overall. 
    
  • Reduce 30-day readmission rate to the unadjusted national Medicare average.  
  • Reduce the rate of admissions for potentially preventable conditions by nearly 30% over 5 years. 
    
  • Submit an annual report (Oct 2016) demonstrating performance over various population health measures.  
  model agreement with CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   (Oct 2016)
• Nursing homes, many without the skills to perform required rehabilitation, are keen to admit Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  short-stay patients discharged from hospitals but not low-profit Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  patients (Apr 2015)
  
• Impacts of hospital stays on the elderly: disrupted sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories.  The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation.  The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase.   Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis.  Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019)  Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. 
  , unappetizing meal impacts, reduced muscle mass, poor balance, additional medicine complications, delirium, pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems.  But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis.  These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems.  Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'.  Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers.  A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex.  The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks.  Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so.  Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety.  Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US.  Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. 
  , internal bleeding, anemia is a decrease in the number of red blood cells or the amount of hemoglobin in the blood.  There are various types: Fanconia anemia, Iron-deficiency anemia, Pernicious anemia, Sickle-cell anemia;
  , ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  crowding/chaos induced PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder, an induced level of stress that is so troubling to the brain that it avoids processing it, change that is necessary if the stress is to be dissipated by the normal brain processes.  The hippocampus loses volume.  The damage to the hippocampus results in: flashbacks, becoming emotionally numb and withdrawn from other people, irritability, jumpiness, being more aggressive, having trouble sleeping and avoidance of the sensory experiences associated with the initial event.  The amygdala increases in volume and is hyperactive.  As a result it remains in a heightened state, resulting in fear of recall and further stress.  PTSD is often accompanied by depression and substance abuse.  It is now being realized that PTSD can be introduced into patients by traumatic treatment regimens such as ICU procedures.  Traumatic head injuries, seen in athletes and soldiers can be reflected in PTSD and can subsequently become associated with prion based dementia.  Some people are genetically predisposed to PTSD, with identical twins responding similarly.  Another risk factor for PTSD is childhood trauma which can induce epi-genetic changes to stress processing.  PTSD can be managed with CBT, and it also responds to propranolol while recalling the traumatic event, where the drug undermines the memory reconsolidation process. 
  , forced to walk in hospital gowns; results in post-hospital syndrome, after discharge - have costly handoff problems reviewed by project BOOST.  When discharge takes too long it ties up acute bed space which can result in adding up to 30% more (unnecessary) capacity when improved discharge would translate into additional revenue.  Various interventions aim to improve the execution of the process including: CTI, TCN and RED for discharge to outpatient; InterAct for discharge to SNFs and BPIP to HHAs.  Discharge information can include:
  • Patient info
    
  • Behavioral summary
  • Treatment history
  • Medical history
  • Treatment objectives
  • Insurance policy
  • Discharge plans
  , Yale's Harlam Krumholz concluded, based on readmission have become a source of increased revenue for hospitals.  But with government interested in reducing the US health care cost curve ACA's HRRP (pay-for-performance), BPCI and CTI and Interact discharge initiative have all increased the focus on unnecessary readmissions.  Now the end-to-end process is under scrutiny with hospitals reengineering discharge (RED) and PAC providers using RAI and TCN. 
  being for unrelated problems to the initial cause of hospitalization (Aug 2018)
• Trump administration, like Obama administration before it & MedPac is the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.  It was established by the BBA.  The mandate is to advise the U.S. Congress on payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and health providers with Medicare beneficiaries.  It produces two major reports each year for Congress.  , propose removing the Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  reimbursement is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  uplift for hospital based physicians (Mar 2019)
• Trump CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   administrator Verma, Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  director Neale, leverages work as a health improvement benefit to justify Medicaid funding of States: Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin; waivered eliigibility work requirements; angering Medicaid beneficiary advocates: CBPP;  (Jan 2018)
• Kentucky applies work requirements Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  Waiver, but advocates for the poor: NHLP; said they would oppose it with legal action (Jan 2018)
• Judge rules Kentucky policy is illegal & HHS is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.   Secretary Azar is remiss in not considering data that should have stopped CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   administrator Verma allowing the work requirements (Jul 2018)
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   administrator Verma agrees Arkansas can implement Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  work requirements, but delays allowing the state to roll back Medicaid expansion (Mar 2018)
  
• Drive towards community based sites of care
  
• CVS Health, continues its UHG like diversified health services strategy: merging with Aetna; responding to Amazon's potential disruption of pharmacy market (Oct 2017)
• CVS Health purchases Aetna for $69 Billion - developing community-based sites of care; a big deal argues Leerink Partners' Gupte (Dec 2017)
• Assessments of the merger vary (Dec 2017)
• CVS + Aetna merger is allowed by regulators with the requirement that some Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  plans are sold to WellCare Health Plans.  No discrete large PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  is left: UHG (OptumRx), Cigna + Express Scripts, Anthem building a PBM; limiting drug cost management for smaller insurers and PBMs.  PBMs have been criticised for secret deals that have helped keep drug prices high.  Health plan control of where prescription drugs are purchased will limit Amazon's disruption of pharmacies, and likely limit consumers opportunities to bargain.  State regulators will start to look at the operations of PBMs.  Large insurers are also entering health care provision of low cost care for chronic conditions and chain care in the community (Oct 2018)
  
• Business model for individual PCP is a Primary Care Physician.  PCPs are viewed by legislators and regulators as central to the effective management of care.  When coordinated care had worked the PCP is a key participant.  In most successful cases they are central.  In certain Medicare ACO models (Pioneer) PCPs are committed to achieve meaningful use requirements.  Working against this is the: replacement of diagnostic skills by technological solutions, low FFS leverage of the PCP compared to specialists, demotivation of battling prior authorization for expensive treatments. 
  collapses under pressure from various large organizations executing acquisitions and mergers: Apple running own clinics for employees, Large hospitals setting up urgent care: HCA, Dignity Health, Northwell Health (GoHealth); CVS Health & Aetna, Wal-Mart & Humana, United Health employs 30,000 physicians and owns one of the  largest urgent care is an efficient and less costly 'alternative' to the ER.  There is no accepted standard.  Urgent care clinics also compete with Primary care based on extended hours and accessible locations including Medical Malls.  Most have a physician on staff and treat ailments like feavers, sprains and sinus and urinary tract infection, but they also can perform X-rays, stitch up cuts and set broken bones.  Unlike an ER they can not admit patients to a hospital.  Some also offer services like pre-employment drug screening and summer camp physicals. 
  groups (MedExpress); who can leverage employed PCP prescriptions for their PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  s, driving some PCPs to compete with urgent care: Healthy Now; and or leverage nurse practitioners, and others to explore One Medical & Aledade (Apr 2018)
  
• Urgent care clinics - FastER Urgent Care clinic is an example of a growing option for many Americans.  9000 such clinics (Dec 2013) nationwide with 4500 providing full service X-ray and lab services.  It offers convenience.  If it pulls patients from primary care it may not be cost effective. 
  
• 85 rural hospitals (5% of them) have closed since 2010: CHY strategy.  Less than half the US is the United States of America.  's rural counties have a hospital that covers maternity, due to business model issues: collapsing birth rate, specialists clustered in large cities; which cascades added risks, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring.  It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system.  As such it is different from uncertainty. 
  : medical visits cost more & take up more time - NICU is neonatal ICU also called an intensive care nursery.   babies need to be visited regularly increasing the impact on mother and family, women go less often to visit doctors, more babies born prematurely, deliveries occur outside hospital or at ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  , hospital is often a large employer and closure impacts the community economics (Oct 2015), but eventually rebalancing occurs with urgent care is an efficient and less costly 'alternative' to the ER.  There is no accepted standard.  Urgent care clinics also compete with Primary care based on extended hours and accessible locations including Medical Malls.  Most have a physician on staff and treat ailments like feavers, sprains and sinus and urinary tract infection, but they also can perform X-rays, stitch up cuts and set broken bones.  Unlike an ER they can not admit patients to a hospital.  Some also offer services like pre-employment drug screening and summer camp physicals. 
  units opening, maternity opening at a remaining hospital in the region, helicopters taking serious cases to hub hospitals (Jul 2018)
  
• Florida's rural Immokalee, in Collier County, needs a hospital, with increasing: births (in ambulances|out of hospital), baby death rate, deaths in fields and parking lots, stroke is when brain cells are deprived of oxygen and begin to die.  750,000 patients a year suffer strokes in the US.  85% of those strokes are caused by clots.  There are two structural types: Ischemic and hemorrhagic.  Thrombectomy has been found to be a highly effective treatment for some stroke situations (Jan 2018). 
  death rate, no nearby ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  , lack of ambulance service; only a 9 to 5 weekday federal health clinic, regulators granted a certificate of need, but Naples Hospital wants the patient base and is objecting to the hospital development as rural hospitals close (Sep 2018)
• Introduction of specialized provider networks is the owned health system and its extended network of partners.  
• Limited, tiered and exclusive provider networks. 
  
• Children's specialty hospitals
  
• Inpatient rehab
  
• Long-term Care (standalone)
• Long-term care and rehab are the biggest technology gaps for enterprise vendors.  Of these only Meditech offers a long-term care solution.  
• Dementia is a classification of memory impairment, constrained feelings and enfeebled or extinct intellect.  The most common form for people under 60 is FTD.  Dementia has multiple causes including: vascular disease (inducing VCI) including strokes, head trauma, syphilis and mercury poisoning for treating syphilis, alcoholism, B12 deficiency (Sep 2016), privation, Androgen deprivation therapy (Oct 2016), stress, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and prion infections such as CJD and kuru.  The condition is typically chronic and treatment long term (Laguna Honda ward) and is predicted by Stanley Prusiner to become a major burden on the health system.  It may be possible to constrain the development some forms of dementia by: physical activity, hypertension management, and ongoing cognitive training.  Dementia appears to develop faster in women than men.   is very expensive with high out of pocket costs (Oct 2015)
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   issue rule, effective from November, constraining nursing homes reimbursed is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  by Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  from using arbitration clauses in their contracts (Sep 2016)
• Hospice has the key goal of helping people with a fatal illness to have the fullest possible life right now.  There are major hospice chains focused on providing palliative care. 
  /Home care
  
• Integration between hospice/home care and acute hospital inpatient EHR refers to electronic health records which are a synonym of EMR.  EHR analysis suggests strengths and weaknesses:
  • The EHR provides an integrated record of the health systems notes on a patient including: Diagnosis and Treatment plans and protocols followed, Prescribed drugs with doses, Adverse drug reactions;
  • The EHR does not necessarily reflect the patient's situation accurately. 
    
  • The EHR often acts as a catch-all.  There is often little time for a doctor, newly attending the patient, to review and validate the historic details. 
    
  • The meaningful use requirements of HITECH and Medicare/Medicaid specify compliance of an EHR system or EHR module for specific environments such as an ambulatory or hospital in-patient setting. 
    
  • As of 2016 interfacing with the EHR is cumbersome and undermines face-to-face time between doctor and patient.  Doctors are allocated 12 minutes to interact with a patient of which less than five minutes was used for recording hand written notes.  With the EHR 12 minutes may be required to update the record!
    
  is poor from enterprise vendors even though they offer home care solutions.  
• Obama DOL update (Aug 2015) will probably increase the cost of home care.  
• Hospices overbill Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  (Apr 2016)
• Humana partners with private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  firms: TPG, and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe; to become the largest player in hospice has the key goal of helping people with a fatal illness to have the fullest possible life right now.  There are major hospice chains focused on providing palliative care. 
  care, by acquiring a Kindred Healthcare hospice division and Curo Health Services.  UHG has already entered & exited the market, in which the government is enforcing quality measures (Jun 2018)
  
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   responds to the increasing percentage of elderly in the population by stimulating PACE is either:
  
  • Protecting Affordable Coverage for Employees Act of 2015, which amends ACA title 1 to alter the definition of a small business, or
    
  • Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, a Medicare program which pays for facilities and services to keep older and disabled Americans in their own homes instead of their having to enter nursing homes.  It was intended to consequently save Medicare and Medicaid money.  All states are required to pay less than the cost of a nursing home stay.  It leverages the success of Britain's Day Hospitals.  PACE started as On Lok, which provided capitation funded day care, to San Francisco's Asian & Italian immigrant families trying to avoid use of nursing homes.  This payment model should encourage providers to keep their patients healthy.  The services include dentistry, which constrains a problematic cascade of issues and rehabilitation which protects against falls.  Medicare sanctioned the model in 1990.  Its implementation was restricted to non-profit organizations but in 2016 CMS allowed for-profit organizations to participate (Aug 2016). 
    
  based home care for seniors (Aug 2016). 
  
• Long-term home health care issue: Poor pay, little allocated Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  budget at the federal or state level which resisted Obama administration FLSA is the fair labor standards act of 1938 which introduced the 40 hour work week.  Franklin Roosevelt considered it the most important legislation of the New Deal after the SSA. 
  changes, immigrant female staff, demeaning cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings: 
    
  • As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
    
  • As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
  • As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time 
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  view of the role; are ensuring a huge shortage of home health care aides who will be needed to support the growing elderly population.  MIT is Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   Sloan's Osterman hopes reducing system errors will justify investment in incentivizing the role (Aug 2017) 
• Fewer people are going to SNF is skilled nursing facility. 
  s.  Many facilities, even with Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  5 star ratings Star ratings are CMS quality ratings of health care domains.  They reflect measures of outcomes including intermediate outcomes, patient experience, access and process.  Care coordination (assessed by CAHPS survey) and quality improvement measures have been added.  Data is sourced from health and drug plans, from CMS contractors, from surveys of enrollees, and from CMS administrative data.  They reflect HEDIS data.   The ACA established Star Ratings as the basis of QBPs.  5-star health plans benefit from being able to market all year round, and beneficiaries can join at any time via a SEP.  Health plans with less than 3-star ratings can be terminated by CMS starting in 2015.  Star ratings cover 9 domains:
  • Ratings of health plans (part C)
  • Staying healthy: screening, tests, vaccines
    
  • Managing chronic (long-term) conditions
  • Member experience with the health plan
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the health plans performance
    
  • Health plan customer service
    
  • Ratings of drug plans (part D)
  • Drug plan customer service
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the drug plan's performance
    
  • Member experience with the drug plan
    
  • Patient safety and accuracy of drug pricing
    
  are closing.  At 70% occupancy, revenue from assisted living is an alternative to parents joining their children's nuclear family or entering a SNF, or Greenhouse Nursinghome.  Atul Gawande's Being Mortal describes the situation.  Federal Medicaid does not directly cover assisted living.  State Medicaid adds coverage through a federal waiver.  Congressional legislation covering assisted living is limited.  Assisted living providers are represented by the National Center for Assisted Living. 
  and independent residents, did not compensate for SNF losses, because of costly regulatory requirements: ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  hospital readmission have become a source of increased revenue for hospitals.  But with government interested in reducing the US health care cost curve ACA's HRRP (pay-for-performance), BPCI and CTI and Interact discharge initiative have all increased the focus on unnecessary readmissions.  Now the end-to-end process is under scrutiny with hospitals reengineering discharge (RED) and PAC providers using RAI and TCN. 
  penalties have driven many patients to be admitted to hospital as observation stays observation stays are inpatient like stays in hospital, except Medicare does not count the stay towards the qualification for SNF reimbursements and the copay for the observation may be considerable.  The volume of outpatient observation stays has been rising. 
  , where Medicare won't cover rehabilitation after discharge, More outpatient surgery is being performed, Medicare Advantage (MA) is a private provider administered health insurance plan providing access to Medicare benefits.  It was originally enacted as part of BBA Medicare + Choice or Part C plans.  The government funded the plan with an annual fee, based on age and severity of the subscriber's medical conditions, rather than FFS.  When a Medicare eligible person enrolls in a MA plan the government pays the private provider a set amount each month.  The participant pays the Medicare part B premium and if required a part C premium each month.  The MA plans offer a PCP who coordinates care.  And the plans have an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses unlike traditional Medicare.  When they obtain treatment they will have to pay a copayment which may be quite high for some specialists.  It is the health plan's responsibility to contract the physician network that will provide the care, leaving the risk with the insurer.  About 36% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled with Medicare Advantage by 2019.  The ACA introduced quality outcome and patient satisfaction based differential payments into MA.  To measure the performance it added a five-star quality rating scheme.  MA plans report their quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS annually and based on the results are awarded one to five stars.  The highest rated plans are provided with large additional payments.  It was assumed that subscribers would shift to the highest rated plans and the other plans would improve or drop out of MA.  And the ACA eliminated subsidies which the federal government used to establish Medicare Advantage.  However, the Obama administration has used a $8.5 Billion demonstration project to maintain this funding.  It is intended that it will eventually taper off so that the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage will be equivalent to standard Medicare. 
  plans seek lower cost alternatives, Patients seek other options when they can: assisted living, home care.  The 2005 DRA is the deficit reduction act of 2005.  It includes a critical imperative to CMS to develop a Medicare payment reform demonstration, using standardized patient information to examine consistency of payment incentives for various Medicare populations, treated in various settings.  As the 2006 budget reconciliation bill (S 1932) it included provisions expected to reduce Medicaid spending by $10 billion over 10 years.  Among the rules are:
  • Tighter restrictions on asset transfers.  Aims to reduce seniors transferring substantial amounts of their money and other assetts to relatives to be eligible for Medicaid funded long term care services.  Those with $500,000 or more in home equity would be automatically disqualified from applying for Medicaid. 
    
  • Greater flexibility to impose premiums and cost-sharing and to change benefit design for certain Medicaid beneficiaries.   
  • Gives all states long-term care partnership programs
  • Authorizes states to include home and community-based services as an optional Medicaid benefit.  
  allowed Medicaid is the state-federal program for the poor.  Originally part of Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Bill, eligibility and services vary by state.  Medicaid currently pays less for care than Medicare, resulting in many care providers refusing to participate in the program.  Less than 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, those in long-term care including nursing homes where 64% are dependent on Medicaid, use one-third of all Medicaid spending which is a problem.  The ACA's Medicaid expansion program, made state optional by the SCOTUS decision, was initially taken up by fifty percent of states.  As of 2016 it covers 70 million Americans at a federal cost of $350 billion a year.  In 2017 it pays for 40% of new US births. 
  to fund assisted living and home care alternatives to SNF care.  Most SNF businesses are at 82% occupancy.  These businesses will cut staffing to protect margins.  It is expected that as the baby boomers reach 80 the demand for SNF will rise again (Oct 2018)
  
• Mental Health Services 
• Reimbusement is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  issues are limiting the number of psychologists who will offer ACA is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Obama care).  In part it is designed to make the health care system costs grow slower.  It aims to do this by: increasing competition between insurers and providers, offering free preventative services to limit the development of serious illnesses, constraining patients' use of expensive services, constraining the growth of payments to Medicare providers and piloting new ways for PCPs to manage patient care to keep patients away from costly E.D.s.  It funds these changes with increased taxes on the wealthy.  It follows an architecture developed by Heritage Action's Butler, Moffit, Haislmaier extended by White House OMB health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel & architect Jeanne Lambrew.  The Obama administration drafting team included: Bob Kocher; allowing it to integrate ideas from: Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fischer (ACO).  The ACA did not include a Medicare buy in (May 2016).  The law includes:
  • Alterations, in title I, to how health care is paid for and who is covered.  This has been altered to ensure
    
  • Americans with preexisting conditions get health insurance cover - buttressed by mandating community rating and
    
  • That they are constrained by the individual mandate to have insurance but the requirement was supported by subsidies for the poor (those with incomes between 100 & 400% of the federal poverty line).  
  • Children, allowed to, stay on their parents insurance until 26 years of age. 
    
  • Medicare solvency improvements. 
    
  • Medicaid expansion, in title II: to poor with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line; an expansion which was subsequently constrained by the Supreme Court's ruling making expansion an optional state government decision. 
    
  • Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) which was enforced by CMS mandated rules finalized in 2011 and effected starting Oct 2012.  
  • Medical home models.  
  • Community transformation grants support the transformation of low income stressed neighborhoods to improve their lifestyles and health. 
    
  • Qualifications for ACOs.  Organizations must:
    
  • Establish a formal legal structure with shared governance which allows the ACO to distribute shared savings payments to participating providers and suppliers. 
    
  • Participate in the MSSP for three or more years. 
    
  • Have a management structure. 
    
  • Have clinical and administrative systems. 
    
  • Include enough PCPs to care for Medicare FFS patient population (> 5000) assigned to the ACO. 
    
  • Be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to the Medicare FFS patient population. 
    
  • Have defined processes to promote: Evidence-based medicine, Patient-centeredness, Quality reporting, Cost management, Coordination of care; 
  • Demonstrate it meets HHS patient-centeredness criteria including use of patient and caregiver assessments and individualized care plans.  
  • CMMI Medicare payment experimentation.  
  • Requirements that pharmaceutical companies must report payments made to physicians (Sunshine Act). 
    
  • A requirement that chain restaurants must report calorie counts on their menus. 
    
  required coverage (Jun 2016)
  
• Dialysis clinics
  
• Congressional action to reduce dialysis service costs induces push back from lobby: Fresenius, DaVita, non-profit clinics & patient advocates (Aug 2013)
  
• Business model and legislation drives dialysis clinics to encourage privately insured dialysis rather than kidney provides multiple vital functions.  It: Produces renin which supports negative feedback, Removes excess organic molecules from the blood, Regulates electrolytes in the blood, Maintains pH homeostasis, Regulates fluid balance, Regulates blood pressure, monitors blood oxygen concentration and signals erythropoiesis with EPO, Reabsorbs water, glucose (SGLT2) and amino acids.  Kidney function is monitored with the GFR.  Kidneys can fail acutely or chronically.  Kidneys are affected by a variety of cancers including: advanced kidney cancer, von Hippel Landau; some of which are induced by PFAS.    Multiple myeloma, type 2 diabetes, TB and drug treatments for MDR TB place a strain on the kidneys and can induce failure.   transplants (Jul 2016)
• Pharmacies
  
• Care Management Services
  
• IT (HIE a Health Information Exchange is responsible for the transmission of health care-related data among facilities, health information organizations and government agencies according to national standards.  They are designed to address legal, organizational and technical challenges that would otherwise impede the sustainability of health information interchange.  An HIE is a component of the HIT.  It must enable reliable and secure transfer of data among diverse systems and facilitate access and retrieval.  The two main types are private and public exchanges.  Private exchanges may be able to leverage homogeneous IT infrastructure to facilitate data sharing.  Public exchanges are likely to be heterogeneous.  RHIO provide the regional organizations to support such HIE.  They are there to ensure that infrastructure amplification initiates.  The government will ensure that low healthcare density areas are served by public HIE infrastructure.  Both centralized and federated technical solutions were initially considered for implementation by the RHIOs for deploying HIE as specified in the Markle Foundation's NHIN common framework.  Common framework clients such as appropriately architected HIE use SOAP messaging to interact with their local SNO's ISB and RLS.  The HIE SOAP query transactions follow the HL7 Query Model.  Alternatively some HIE's are now using direct messaging to support interoperation.  HIE deployment goals have been phased (1 - supporting care transitions, 2 - Quality and care management, 3 - Population health).  Some HIEs will support "EHR-lite" as part of their functionality.  HIE does not yet solve some difficult challenges:
  • Safeguarding the security of health information.  Currently HIEs conforming to the common framework only provide locations of clinical data held remotely.  
  • Providing effective life cycle management.  The HIE is dependent on the local set of entities to provide updates that match the current state of the entity data. 
    
  etc.)
  
• Bundled payments is where the purchaser disburses a single predefined payment to cover certain combinations of hospital, physician, post-acute, or other services performed during an episode of care relating to a particular condition (unlike capitation).  This bundling is assumed (Sep 2018) to allow the value delivery system to optimize around low cost high quality long term health care.  With one bundled payment physicians & hospitals must coordinate care and reduce the unit costs to remain profitable.  And to avoid taking on risk of expensive complications physicians & hospitals are incented to standardize and focus on quality.  This optimization is dependent on quantifying the value of the outcome of the episode of care.  Previously FFS payments induced excessive treatment activity.  Bundled payment is included in CMS ACE demonstrations and BPCI initiatives.  There are significant impacts on IT. 
  
  1. It is argued that effective pricing of the bundle requires marketing data which must be extracted from the historic transaction base.  
  2. Billing and payment systems must be updated to handle the receipt and distribution of the bundled payments. 
     
  3. Care delivery must be re-architected to reduce costs and improve quality. 
     
  4. Monitoring sensors can be used to feed reports to ensure re-architected operations conform.  
  for episodes of care - An episode of care is the treatment of a specific medical condition during a set period of time.  After MedPac recommended episode based payment bundling for inpatient hospital care it has become a key focus of Medicare incentive strategies. 
  with outcome requirements.  Michael Porter argues that highly beneficial patient oriented outcomes can be delivered cost effectively by focused providers paid for each episode of care with a bundled payment.  
• The chargemaster is a hospital specific mapping of chargeable ICD procedure codes to the description and list price set by the hospital. 
  driven top down provider measured cost accounting process will need to be replaced with activity based cost accounting identifies the process based flow of activities used to perform a task and the cost of each activity to effectively apportion costs. 
  .  
• Extended phenotypic alignment will constrain providers and payers include four types:
  • From the 1930s the insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield catalyzed health care activity by paying a daily per diem to hospitals for the diagnoses and treatments the hospital's dispensed.  At their inception in 1966 Medicare and Medicaid followed this reimbursement model. 
  • From 1983 Medicare and Medicaid switched to the PPS reimbursement mechanism.  This forced alignment of the supplier, diagnosis, treatment, billing and reimbursement processes.  The health care network is still structurally aligned around PPS.  Under scrutiny of ProPAC and its successor MedPAC,  as well as pressure of the BBA after 1997, the payments per DRG have been steadily reduced until it was below the cost of care, forcing hospitals to seek margin from their other payers.  Medicare outlier payments benefited hospitals that inflated charges and thus became eligible. 
    
  • Employers as they experienced cost shifting from the hospital's increased product charges moved their employees over to managed care based payment. 
  • Private payers pay hospitals directly for their diagnosis and treatment.  Typically this group has little power.  There are default rates for private payers - typically 40% of billed charges that are not covered by a fixed payment or a fee schedule.  For the uninsured poor until 2004 they obtained little discount on the hospital's chargemaster list price, because insurers and CMS required to be charged the lowest value offered to any patients.  Medicare has now relaxed this constraint. 
  from shifting to a bundled payments value chain.  
• Ariadni's Gawande, BCG's Rosenberg & University of Michigan's Dimick conclude from Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  & private insurance admissions data that quality of outcomes varies within and between hospitals and the data is not generally available to the public (Dec 2016). 
• Impacts of hospital stays on the elderly: disrupted sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories.  The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation.  The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase.   Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis.  Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019)  Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. 
  , unappetizing meal impacts, reduced muscle mass, poor balance, additional medicine complications, delirium, pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems.  But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis.  These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems.  Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'.  Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers.  A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex.  The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks.  Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so.  Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety.  Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US.  Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. 
  , internal bleeding, anemia is a decrease in the number of red blood cells or the amount of hemoglobin in the blood.  There are various types: Fanconia anemia, Iron-deficiency anemia, Pernicious anemia, Sickle-cell anemia;
  , ED is emergency department.  Pain is the main reason (75%) patients go to an E.D.  It has traditionally been part of an acute care hospital but recently is being deployed standalone as a catchment funnel to the owning hospital.  The EMTALA legislation requires E.D. treatment to stabilize every person seeking treatment by most hospitals.  Unreimbursed care is supported from federal government funds.  E. D. profitability has been helped by hospitals contracting with 3rd party companies who are able to improve margins through surprise billing.  The standalone E.D. competes with the positioning and brand power of lower cost urgent care clinics.  Commercial nature of care requires walk-ins to register to gain access to care.  With the focus on treatment of pain, E.D.s are a major distributor of opioids (5% of opioid prescriptions) and a major starting point of addiction in patients but are cutting back (Jun 2016). 
  crowding/chaos induced PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder, an induced level of stress that is so troubling to the brain that it avoids processing it, change that is necessary if the stress is to be dissipated by the normal brain processes.  The hippocampus loses volume.  The damage to the hippocampus results in: flashbacks, becoming emotionally numb and withdrawn from other people, irritability, jumpiness, being more aggressive, having trouble sleeping and avoidance of the sensory experiences associated with the initial event.  The amygdala increases in volume and is hyperactive.  As a result it remains in a heightened state, resulting in fear of recall and further stress.  PTSD is often accompanied by depression and substance abuse.  It is now being realized that PTSD can be introduced into patients by traumatic treatment regimens such as ICU procedures.  Traumatic head injuries, seen in athletes and soldiers can be reflected in PTSD and can subsequently become associated with prion based dementia.  Some people are genetically predisposed to PTSD, with identical twins responding similarly.  Another risk factor for PTSD is childhood trauma which can induce epi-genetic changes to stress processing.  PTSD can be managed with CBT, and it also responds to propranolol while recalling the traumatic event, where the drug undermines the memory reconsolidation process. 
  , forced to walk in hospital gowns; results in post-hospital syndrome, after discharge - have costly handoff problems reviewed by project BOOST.  When discharge takes too long it ties up acute bed space which can result in adding up to 30% more (unnecessary) capacity when improved discharge would translate into additional revenue.  Various interventions aim to improve the execution of the process including: CTI, TCN and RED for discharge to outpatient; InterAct for discharge to SNFs and BPIP to HHAs.  Discharge information can include:
  • Patient info
    
  • Behavioral summary
  • Treatment history
  • Medical history
  • Treatment objectives
  • Insurance policy
  • Discharge plans
  , Yale's Harlam Krumholz concluded, based on readmission have become a source of increased revenue for hospitals.  But with government interested in reducing the US health care cost curve ACA's HRRP (pay-for-performance), BPCI and CTI and Interact discharge initiative have all increased the focus on unnecessary readmissions.  Now the end-to-end process is under scrutiny with hospitals reengineering discharge (RED) and PAC providers using RAI and TCN. 
  being for unrelated problems to the initial cause of hospitalization (Aug 2018)
• Large insurers restructure their delivery networks:
  
• CVS Health, continues its UHG like diversified health services strategy: merging with Aetna; responding to Amazon's potential disruption of pharmacy market (Oct 2017)
• CVS Health purchases Aetna for $69 Billion - developing community-based sites of care; a big deal argues Leerink Partners' Gupte (Dec 2017)
• Assessments of the merger vary (Dec 2017)
• CVS + Aetna merger is allowed by regulators with the requirement that some Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  plans are sold to WellCare Health Plans.  No discrete large PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  is left: UHG (OptumRx), Cigna + Express Scripts, Anthem building a PBM; limiting drug cost management for smaller insurers and PBMs.  PBMs have been criticised for secret deals that have helped keep drug prices high.  Health plan control of where prescription drugs are purchased will limit Amazon's disruption of pharmacies, and likely limit consumers opportunities to bargain.  State regulators will start to look at the operations of PBMs.  Large insurers are also entering health care provision of low cost care for chronic conditions and chain care in the community (Oct 2018)
  
• UnitedHealth purchases standalone surgery center Surgical Care Affiliates for Optum's OptumCare (Jan 2017)
• UnitedHealth purchases DaVita's physician group for Optum for $4.9 Billion.  US is the United States of America.   needs a Value Delivery System (VDS is value delivery system.  ) for chronic disease: asthma is inflammation of the airways resulting in their narrowing, swelling and generating additional mucus which inhibits breathing.  Its prevalence doubled in the US between 1980 and 2000.  Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood, the most common reason for being away from school and the most common reason for hospitalization.  10 to 13% of children's asthma cases are due to obesity.  Among obese children 23 to 27% of asthma cases are due to obesity.  Diagnosis: Propeller Health; Treatments include: Xolair;
  , and diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, limb amputations and kidney failure.  It is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.  Insulin and glucose levels are regulated by the pancreas, liver, muscle, brain and fat.  Diabetes occurs when the insulin level is insufficient to regulate the glucose in the system.  As we age our muscles become less sensitive to insulin and the pancreas responds by increasing the amount generated.  Increased fat levels in obesity demand more insulin overloading the pancreas.  Persistent high glucose levels are also toxic to the pancreas beta cells.  High glucocorticoid levels have been associated with type 2 diabetes.  There are genetic risk factors since siblings of someone with the disease have three times the baseline risk (about 50% of the risk of getting type 2 diabetes is genetic).  The inheritance is polygenic.  More than 20 genes have been identified as risk factors, but that is too few to account for the 50% weighting so many more will be identified.  Of those identified so far many are associated with the beta cells.  The one with the strongest relative risk is TCF7L2.  The disease can be effectively controlled through a diligent application of treatments and regular checkups.  Doctors are monitored for how under control their patients' diabetes is (Sep 2015).  Treatments include:
  • Metformin - does not change the course of pre-diabetes - if you stop taking it, it is as if it hasn't been taken. 
    
  • Diet
  • Exercise
  .  Northwestern's Garthwaite asks: is Kaiser's business model under threat? (Dec 2017)
• CMS is the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.   implements CHRONIC care act of 2017 is Ron Wyden & Orrin Hatch's Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic Care Act signed into law by President Trump as title III of the BBA of 2018. 
  through Medicare Advantage (MA) is a private provider administered health insurance plan providing access to Medicare benefits.  It was originally enacted as part of BBA Medicare + Choice or Part C plans.  The government funded the plan with an annual fee, based on age and severity of the subscriber's medical conditions, rather than FFS.  When a Medicare eligible person enrolls in a MA plan the government pays the private provider a set amount each month.  The participant pays the Medicare part B premium and if required a part C premium each month.  The MA plans offer a PCP who coordinates care.  And the plans have an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses unlike traditional Medicare.  When they obtain treatment they will have to pay a copayment which may be quite high for some specialists.  It is the health plan's responsibility to contract the physician network that will provide the care, leaving the risk with the insurer.  About 36% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled with Medicare Advantage by 2019.  The ACA introduced quality outcome and patient satisfaction based differential payments into MA.  To measure the performance it added a five-star quality rating scheme.  MA plans report their quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS annually and based on the results are awarded one to five stars.  The highest rated plans are provided with large additional payments.  It was assumed that subscribers would shift to the highest rated plans and the other plans would improve or drop out of MA.  And the ACA eliminated subsidies which the federal government used to establish Medicare Advantage.  However, the Obama administration has used a $8.5 Billion demonstration project to maintain this funding.  It is intended that it will eventually taper off so that the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage will be equivalent to standard Medicare. 
  changes, affecting the costly half of Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  's patients with multiple chronic conditions.  The act offers additional benefits for people suffering from chronic diseases including: diabetes includes type 1 and type 2.  Common side effects include: increased heart disease, hypertension, kidney disease, vision loss, nerve damage, and infections. 
  , Alzheimer's is a dementia which correlates with deposition of amyloid plaques in the neurons.  As of 2015 there are 5 million Alzheimer's patients in the USA.  It was originally defined as starting in middle age which is rare, so it was a rare dementia.  But in 1980s it was redefined as any dementia without another known cause. Early indications include mood and behavioral changes (MBI) and declarative memory and thinking problems (MCI).  Specific cells within the hippocampal circuitry and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are damaged.  The amygdala, cerebelum and other areas supporting implicit memory are not impacted during the early stages of the disease.  Grid cell destruction results in a sense of being lost.  The default mode network is disrupted.  Variants include: late-onset sporadic; with risk factors - ApoE4 for late onset Alzheimer's, presenilin, androgen deprivation therapy (Dec 2015), type 2 diabetes.  There are multiple theories of the mechanism of Alzheimer's during aging: Allen Roses argues that it is due to gene alleles that limit the capacity of mitochondria to support neuron operation, Neurons of sporadic Alzheimer's sufferers show greater APP gene diversity due to somatic recombination; It may be initiated by: stress induced HHV-6a, HHV7 herpes activation (Jun 2018) and or an increasingly leaky blood-brain barrier; and a subsequent innate immune response to the infections (May 2016).  The Alzheimer's pathway follows:
  • Plaques form.  These are seen in fMRIs 10 to 15 years prior to detecting memory and thinking changes.  APP deployed in the cell membrane is cut into three parts.  The external part becomes amyloid-beta peptide which aggregates into Amyloid plaques, external to the neurons, if too much is generated or it is not removed fast enough. 
    
  • Solanezumab aimed to inhibit plaque formation but clinical trials failed (Nov 2016). 
    
  • Encouraging the garbage collection of amyloid and tau with gamma rhythms stimulation retards Alzheimer's in mice studies (Mar 2019)
    
  • BACE inhibitors block an enzyme needed to form amyloid. 
    
  • Mutation driven misfolded Tau proteins can form tangles within the cytoplasm of neurons.  The Tau tangles kill nerve cells.  LMTX is a drug treatment targeted at these tangles. 
    
  • The brain becomes inflamed resulting in the killing of many more nerve cells.  The hippocampus disintegrates and the brain loses critical functions and memory loss becomes noticeable. 
    
  , Parkinson's corresponds to the breakdown of certain interneurons in the brain.  It is not fully understood why this occurs.  Dopamine system neuron breakdown generates the classical symptoms of tremors and rigidity.  In some instances an uncommon LRRK2 gene mutation confers a high risk of Parkinson's disease.  In rare cases Italian and Greek families are impacted in their early forties and fifties resulting from a single letter mutation in alpha-synuclein which alters the alpha-synuclein protein causing degeneration in the substantia nigra, after a build up of Lewy bodies in the neurons.  But poisoning from MPTP has also been shown to destroy dopamine system neurons.  DeLong showed that MPTP poisoning results in overactivity in the subthalamic nucleus.  People who have an appendectomy in their 20s are at lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease.  The Alpha-synuclein protein is known to build up in the appendix in association with changes in the gut microbiome.  This buildup may support the 'flow' of alpha-synuclein from the gut along neurons that route to the brain.  Paraquat has also been linked to Parkinson's disease.  Parkinson's disease does not directly kill many sufferers.  But it impacts swallowing which encourages development of pneumonia through inhaling or aspirating food.  And it undermines balance which can increase the possibility of falls.  Dememtia can also develop.  Treatment with deep-brain stimulation, after surgical implantation of electrodes in the subthalamic nucleus removes the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in some patients. 
  , CHF is congestive heart failure which occurs when the heart is unable to generate enough blood flow to meet the body's demands.  There are two main types: failure due to left ventricular dysfunction and abnormal diastolic function increasing the stiffness of the left ventricle and decreasing its relaxation.  Heart expansion in CHF distorts the mitral valve which exacerbates the problems.  MitraClip surgery trials found effective in correcting the mitral valve damage (Sep 2018).  Treatments include: digoxin; , rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks the joints and can generate inflammation around the lungs and heart.  It can be treated with: Enbrel, Humira, Ilaris, Xeljanz;
  , and some cancers is the out-of-control growth of cells, which have stopped obeying their cooperative schematic planning and signalling infrastructure.  It results from compounded: oncogene, tumor suppressor, DNA caretaker; mutations in the DNA.  In 2010 one third of Americans are likely to die of cancer.  Cell division rates did not predict likelihood of cancer.  Viral infections are associated.  Radiation and carcinogen exposure are associated.  Lifestyle impacts the likelihood of cancer occurring: Drinking alcohol to excess, lack of exercise, Obesity, Smoking, More sun than your evolved melanin protection level; all significantly increase the risk of cancer occurring (Jul 2016). 
  .  Combinations of social and medical services are funded.  The act will encourage high tech remote capabilities to be deployed (Jun 2018)
• The implementation is seen as undermining traditional Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  with part D is a federal program to subsidize the costs of outpatient prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries enacted as part of the MMA and delivered entirely by private companies.  It is an evolved amplifier with MMA schematic rules ensuring catalytic tax subsidies: reinsurance; flow to a broad group of elderly voters and a small but influential group of payers: UnitedHealth, Humana, CVS Health; while pharmaceutical companies also benefited from increased sales of reimbursed drugs.  It includes:
  
  • E-prescribing regulations.  Health care providers that electronically prescribe Part D drugs for Part D eligible individuals under 42 CFR 423.160(a)(3)(iii) may use HL7 or NCPDP SCRIPT standard to transmit prescriptions & related information internally but must use NCPDP SCRIPT (or other adopted standard) to transmit information to another legal entity.  
  • Premium subsidy set by a market average.  Medicare collects bids from all plans that reflect their costs of providing the minimum required level of drug coverage. It then sets the subsidy at 74.5% of the average bid.  
  • Premium coverage gap (doughnut hole) between the 74.5% premium subsidy and the catastrophic-coverage threshold.  The BBA of 2018 required Part D insurers cover 5% of the beneficiaries coverage gap and drug companies provide discounts that reduce federal spending by a total of $7.7 billion through 2027. 
    
  & Medigap is additional private insurance purchased to cover health care costs not covered by Medicare: copayments, deductibles and foreign travel insurance. 
  , and generating confusion in the Medicare Advantage (MA) is a private provider administered health insurance plan providing access to Medicare benefits.  It was originally enacted as part of BBA Medicare + Choice or Part C plans.  The government funded the plan with an annual fee, based on age and severity of the subscriber's medical conditions, rather than FFS.  When a Medicare eligible person enrolls in a MA plan the government pays the private provider a set amount each month.  The participant pays the Medicare part B premium and if required a part C premium each month.  The MA plans offer a PCP who coordinates care.  And the plans have an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses unlike traditional Medicare.  When they obtain treatment they will have to pay a copayment which may be quite high for some specialists.  It is the health plan's responsibility to contract the physician network that will provide the care, leaving the risk with the insurer.  About 36% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled with Medicare Advantage by 2019.  The ACA introduced quality outcome and patient satisfaction based differential payments into MA.  To measure the performance it added a five-star quality rating scheme.  MA plans report their quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS annually and based on the results are awarded one to five stars.  The highest rated plans are provided with large additional payments.  It was assumed that subscribers would shift to the highest rated plans and the other plans would improve or drop out of MA.  And the ACA eliminated subsidies which the federal government used to establish Medicare Advantage.  However, the Obama administration has used a $8.5 Billion demonstration project to maintain this funding.  It is intended that it will eventually taper off so that the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage will be equivalent to standard Medicare. 
  subscribers (Jul 2018)
• Medicare Advantage (MA) is a private provider administered health insurance plan providing access to Medicare benefits.  It was originally enacted as part of BBA Medicare + Choice or Part C plans.  The government funded the plan with an annual fee, based on age and severity of the subscriber's medical conditions, rather than FFS.  When a Medicare eligible person enrolls in a MA plan the government pays the private provider a set amount each month.  The participant pays the Medicare part B premium and if required a part C premium each month.  The MA plans offer a PCP who coordinates care.  And the plans have an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses unlike traditional Medicare.  When they obtain treatment they will have to pay a copayment which may be quite high for some specialists.  It is the health plan's responsibility to contract the physician network that will provide the care, leaving the risk with the insurer.  About 36% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled with Medicare Advantage by 2019.  The ACA introduced quality outcome and patient satisfaction based differential payments into MA.  To measure the performance it added a five-star quality rating scheme.  MA plans report their quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS annually and based on the results are awarded one to five stars.  The highest rated plans are provided with large additional payments.  It was assumed that subscribers would shift to the highest rated plans and the other plans would improve or drop out of MA.  And the ACA eliminated subsidies which the federal government used to establish Medicare Advantage.  However, the Obama administration has used a $8.5 Billion demonstration project to maintain this funding.  It is intended that it will eventually taper off so that the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage will be equivalent to standard Medicare. 
  plans are being provided with more funds by Congress, but even 5 star Star ratings are CMS quality ratings of health care domains.  They reflect measures of outcomes including intermediate outcomes, patient experience, access and process.  Care coordination (assessed by CAHPS survey) and quality improvement measures have been added.  Data is sourced from health and drug plans, from CMS contractors, from surveys of enrollees, and from CMS administrative data.  They reflect HEDIS data.   The ACA established Star Ratings as the basis of QBPs.  5-star health plans benefit from being able to market all year round, and beneficiaries can join at any time via a SEP.  Health plans with less than 3-star ratings can be terminated by CMS starting in 2015.  Star ratings cover 9 domains:
  • Ratings of health plans (part C)
  • Staying healthy: screening, tests, vaccines
    
  • Managing chronic (long-term) conditions
  • Member experience with the health plan
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the health plans performance
    
  • Health plan customer service
    
  • Ratings of drug plans (part D)
  • Drug plan customer service
  • Member complaints, problems getting services, and improvements in the drug plan's performance
    
  • Member experience with the drug plan
    
  • Patient safety and accuracy of drug pricing
    
  plans are denying valid care, via prior authorization is a constraint imposed by some insurance companies prior to their agreeing to cover some prescribed medications or medical procedures.  The constraint may be due to: age, medical necessity, availability of a generic alternative, or to check drug interactions.  After a healthcare provider orders a service for a patient, the provider's staff will contact the patient's insurer to determine if they require prior authorization.  This should result in an exception process which may involve the provider's staff manual faxing a prior authorization form to the insurer.  If the service is rejected, the healthcare provider may file an appeal based on the provider's medical review process.  It may take 30 days for the insurer to approve the request.  , and claims by providers and patients, to improve FFV is fee-for-value payment.  It may be a bundled payment for a set of services provided by a group of doctors and facilities, or full capitation.  In each case the risk has shifted from the payer to the providers of care. 
  profits, the HHS is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.   inspector general reports.  The abuse is widespread and persistent.  AHIP's Matt Eyles defended the process.  Few people appeal but 75% of those who do succeed (Oct 2018)
  
• Humana partners with private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  firms: TPG, and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe; to become the largest player in hospice has the key goal of helping people with a fatal illness to have the fullest possible life right now.  There are major hospice chains focused on providing palliative care. 
  care, by acquiring a Kindred Healthcare hospice division and Curo Health Services.  UHG has already entered & exited the market, in which the government is enforcing quality measures (Jun 2018)
  
• Revenue Cycle operations - internal or outsourced.  Outsourcing of total RCM is either:
  
  • Restrictive cardiomyopathy, a rare disease where scar tissue makes the heart muscle rigid and reduces the efficiency.  Or
    
  • Revenue Cycle Management aligns treatment with reimbursement.  Customer service will be involved.  IT will architect the core billing, decision support and ad-hoc services, constructed by RCM vendors, into systems to support RCM.  The Hospital's central business office will aim to maximize cash recoveries.  As per Deming, mistakes in the RCM pipeline result in rework and lost cash flow and revenue of between 4 - 12%.  The staff must be trained and fully engaged in the design and operation of the pipeline.  The front end processes are best placed to capture all the information needed to make the cycle successful.  The activities include:
  • Scheduling and Appointments - where visits and procedures are booked and demographic and insurance information is collected.  If this information is incorrect it is likely the claims will not forward to third party payers.  When resources and their states are accurately known an optimal set of plans can be constructed to efficiently and effectively flow patients through the system.  But that is difficult to guarantee because of a number of interrelated problems:
  • Scale - as the number of resources increases the ability of a central scheduling system to represent all of them accurately and reliably becomes impossible. 
    
  • Ubiquity - a CAS strategy for ensuring availability is to have an over-abundance of equivalent resource that can be used for schedule allocation.  But often these resource levels are set by local decision makers who all respond at about the same time to imposed funding changes.  The effect is to suddenly and unpredictably undermine the guarantee of over-abundance.  Sometimes the assumption of equivalence also fails as in the desire of a patient to see only a specific surgeon. 
    
  • Changes can ripple through the plans requiring coordination meetings and notifications or guaranteed receipt of status updates. 
    
  • Verification checks for:
    
  • Referral - Is there PCP authorization?  Is the PCP referred service covered by the patient's plan,
    
  • Authorization - obtain Insurance authorization if required, and
    
  • Pre-certification - is there 'need' for inpatient care or other care before admission by the MCO.  Otherwise could introduce problems including not obtaining/verifying the insurance name, number and eligibility, not securing pre-certification and pre-authorization with time limits, not copying the insurance card, not checking for secondary coverage, not detecting expired referral or authorization,
    
  • Pre-registration - provide advice about their financial obligations and what documents to bring to the procedure.  If there is a copay or an outstanding payment to be paid these should be processed,
    
  • Registration - some patients are scheduled outside of the main admitting process (by OP clinic or E.D.) and this must be detected and the scheduling verification and pre-registration process be performed,
    
  • Time of service payments - co pays and self pays,
    
  • Coding - identify diagnosis (ICD 9 -> ICD-10 codes) and treatment (CPT) activities and charges for the episode.  More than 80% of hospital cases are coded in error. 
    
  • Demographics and billing data entry - enter charges and adjust capitated charges,
    
  • Patient statements - submit primary and secondary claims (following HIPAA formats) with or without involvement of a clearinghouse, produce patient statements including time of service, outstanding balance, charged amount with codes, insurance details, forms used (UB 92/04 and HCFA 1500).  A paper based claims filing has a rejection rate of 30%.  Duplicate claim payment rates of 1 - 2% of medical expenses are common.  Duplicate claims detection is often not part of the process.  Payer's goals are in conflict with Provider goals.  
    
  • Collections and payment posting - Post all payments and adjustments and deposit money into the bank,
    
  • Denials and appeals - resubmission and appeal of claims, denial analysis and bad debts and write offs.  To reduce denial rates and appeals the reimbursement contracts payer processes and actual denials must be analyzed and understood. 
    
  • Account follow up - Patient inquiries, resubmission of claims and issue refunds. 
    
  • Financial counseling;
  is used by about 6%
  
• Health care clearinghouses
  
• HMOs - Health Plans and Insurers requiring value-based purchasing and alternative payment arrangements
• Shift from FFS is fee-for-service payment.  For health care providers the high profits were made in hospitalizations, imaging and surgery.  Due to its inducing excessive treatment activity it may be replaced by FFV bundled payment.   to Pay-for-performance represents a number of programs:
  • Value-Based Purchasing Program which includes mandatory pay-for-performance where a percentage of hospital inpatient payments are withheld and then earned back based on achieving quality metrics.  Withholds begin at 1% in 2013 and rise to 2% by 2017. 
    
  • HRRP which penalizes Hospitals with a readmission rate that is greater than expected.  Penalties capped at 1% of total DRG in 2013, 2% in 2014 and 3% in 2015. 
    
  • CMS is also using a high HAC percentage as a penalty - 1% penalty deducted from DRG payment (HACRP) starting in 2015 to encourage reduction of HACs. 
    
  • MCMP EHR deployment in physician practices. 
    
  , shared savings is the Medicare Shared Savings Program.  The program began in 2012 with 3 year term contracts.  ACO Physician groups and hospitals are eligible to participate but there must be primary care physicians in the ACO.  Participating ACOs must serve > 5000 Medicare beneficiaries.  The potential for a bonus payment is based on Medicare cost savings and quality metrics.  Two payment models are available.  Only one has downside risk involved.  CMS included 'robust' quality measures to monitor the quality of care provided and beneficiary satisfaction (see fact sheet 'Improving Quality of Care for Medicare Patients: Accountable Care Organizations'). 
  , bundled payments is where the purchaser disburses a single predefined payment to cover certain combinations of hospital, physician, post-acute, or other services performed during an episode of care relating to a particular condition (unlike capitation).  This bundling is assumed (Sep 2018) to allow the value delivery system to optimize around low cost high quality long term health care.  With one bundled payment physicians & hospitals must coordinate care and reduce the unit costs to remain profitable.  And to avoid taking on risk of expensive complications physicians & hospitals are incented to standardize and focus on quality.  This optimization is dependent on quantifying the value of the outcome of the episode of care.  Previously FFS payments induced excessive treatment activity.  Bundled payment is included in CMS ACE demonstrations and BPCI initiatives.  There are significant impacts on IT. 
  
  1. It is argued that effective pricing of the bundle requires marketing data which must be extracted from the historic transaction base.  
  2. Billing and payment systems must be updated to handle the receipt and distribution of the bundled payments. 
     
  3. Care delivery must be re-architected to reduce costs and improve quality. 
     
  4. Monitoring sensors can be used to feed reports to ensure re-architected operations conform.  
  , episode of care - An episode of care is the treatment of a specific medical condition during a set period of time.  After MedPac recommended episode based payment bundling for inpatient hospital care it has become a key focus of Medicare incentive strategies. 
  , and global capitation is a global payment for all care for a patient during a specified time period.  It forces the provider of care to take a high risk.  Managing the risk implies successful population health management. 
  .  
• New health insurance product designs with higher patient copays is a fixed payment for a covered service after any deductible has been met.  It is a key strategy of the ACA to make subscribers aware of the costs of treatment and to put pressure on high cost health services.  As such suppliers and providers are keen to undermine the copayment: value based health insurance, Paying the copayment (Oct 2015), Place on the USPSTF list of preventative services (Sep 2016);
  for more expensive care options. 
  
• Marketing & Advertising
• TV advertising by big pharma: Abbvie, Pfizer; targets elderly for cancer is the out-of-control growth of cells, which have stopped obeying their cooperative schematic planning and signalling infrastructure.  It results from compounded: oncogene, tumor suppressor, DNA caretaker; mutations in the DNA.  In 2010 one third of Americans are likely to die of cancer.  Cell division rates did not predict likelihood of cancer.  Viral infections are associated.  Radiation and carcinogen exposure are associated.  Lifestyle impacts the likelihood of cancer occurring: Drinking alcohol to excess, lack of exercise, Obesity, Smoking, More sun than your evolved melanin protection level; all significantly increase the risk of cancer occurring (Jul 2016). 
  and cardiovascular refers to:
  
  • Conditions where narrowed and blocked blood vessels result in angina, hypertension, CHD and heart attacks and hemorrhagic/ischemic strokes.  Mutations of the gene PCSK9 have been implicated in cardiovascular disease.  Rare families with dominant inheritence of the mutations have an overactive protein, very high levels of blood cholesterol and cardiac disease. Other rare PCSK9 mutations result in an 88% reduced risk from heart disease.  Inflammation is associated with cardiovascular disease (Aug 2017). 
    
  treatments: Lyrica, Humira, Eliquis; as viewers respond positively to warning lists.  The F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.   may help with more focused list of side-effects (Dec 2017)
  
• Fundraising
  
• MS-KCC reprioritizes charity strategies: Society of MSK volunteer fundraising arm which raises more than $20 million a year; in response to issues with AI leverage and conflicts of interest.  MS-KCC recently completed a $3.5 billion multi-year fund raising drive.  Nonprofit consultants Acorn Advisors and TCC Group note how important reputation is in fund raising (Sep 2018)
  
• Suppliers
• Trials funded by pharmaceutical companies and constrained by F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.   typically lock in treatment protocols.  A UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   government funded Cambridge University study, shows Herceptin: breast tumors grow rapidly because they respond via the human EGF receptor (HER), coded for by the gene 'Her2', to cell growth signal epidermal growth factor (EGF).  Herceptin inhibits the growth of the Her-2+ tumors by inhibiting the EGFR.   treatment for early stage breast cancer is a variety of different cancerous conditions of the breast tissue.  World wide it is the leading type of cancer in women and is 100 times more common in women than men.  260,000 new cases of breast cancer will occur in the US in 2018 causing 41,000 deaths.  The varieties include: Hormone sensitive tumors that test negative for her2 (the most common type affecting three quarters of breast cancers in the US, BRCA1/2 positive, ductal carcinomas including DCIS, lobular carcinomas including LCIS.  Receptor presence on the cancer cells is used as a classification: Her2+/-, estrogen (ER)+/-, progesterone (PR)+/-.  Metastasis classes the cancer as stage 4.  Genetic risk factors include: BRCA, p53, PTEN, STK11, CHEK2, ATM, GATA3, BRIP1 and PALB2.  Treatments include: Tamoxifen, Raloxifene; where worrying racial disparities have been found (Dec 2013).  International studies indicate early stage breast cancer typed by a genomic test: Oncotype DX, MammaPrint; can be treated without chemotherapy (Aug 2016, Jun 2018) works best after 6 months, rather than the current 12 month protocol (May 2018)
• Large pharmaceutical companies: BMS, Eli Lilly, Roche; rich with cash from tax repatriation, are using it to purchase biotech companies: Celgene, Loxo Oncology, Spark Therapeutics; to obtain blockbuster drugs (Mar 2019)
  
• Filling prescriptions for opioids has become more constrained: DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.  ; but Congress has pulled back: EPAEDE is the ensuring patient access and effective drug enforcement act of 2016.  It allows patients' access to necessary medications including opioid painkillers (Sep 2015).  And it constrains the powers of the DEA to intervene (May 2016).  It establishes a process for federal agencies to go through before a distribution center can be shut down.  Sponsors include Senators Orrin Hatch and Sheldon Whitehouse and Representatives Tom Marino and Peter Welch. 
  ; responding to pharmacies: CVS, Walgreens; drug distributors: Cardinal, McKesson; leaving states: Vermont (Jan 2014); desparate (May 2016)
  
• McKesson criticized by some shareholders: Teamsters; for enabling opioid epidemic (Jan 2014), having business impacted by it, being repeatedly penalized for it, while awarding executives excessive compensation (Jul 2017)
• Generics' low prices limit interest in manufacturing.  Consolidation to 3 powerful wholesalers: Amerisource, Cardinal, McKesson; resulted in rock bottom prices for generics, and little stimulus for generic manufacturers.  So F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.   requirements to correct manufacturing issues can result in stoppages: Mylan manufactures buspirone is an anti-anxiety medication, marketed as Buspar, which is not a GABA receptor agonist, minimizing potential for physical dependence and withdrawal.  It is used to treat: GAD, major depressive disorder where it augments antidepressents. 
  , at Morgantown, West Virginia, was told to clean the facility.  It has stopped production of the low profit anti-anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Anxiety disorders are now seen as a related cluster, including PTSD, panic attacks, and phobias.  Major anxiety, is typically episodic, correlated with increased activity in the amygdala, results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Women are four times more likely to suffer from anxiety.  Louann Brizendine concludes this helps prepare mothers, so they are ready to protect their children.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future.  Sufferers of mild autism often develop anxiety disorders.  Treatments for anxiety differ.  50 to 70% of people with generalized anxiety respond to drugs increasing serotonin concentrations, where there is relief from symptoms: worry, guilt; linked to depression, which are treated with SSRIs (Prozac).  But many fear-related disorders respond better to psychotherapy: psychoanalysis, and intensive CBT. 
  drug causing major shortages.  Impax already stopped producing buspirone (Feb 2019)
  
• Distributors ramped up the opioid crisis, acting as an infrastructure amplifier.  They devised systems to avoid regulation: limited compliance operations, helped pharmacies (Wal-Mart, CVS are the largest they supply) remove restrictions on sales of opioids, warned pharmacies that were indicating questionable sales trends, prepared pharmacies for coming audits; helping shipments and profits grow exponentially.  The rewards were huge, and the penalties light, since the aligned VDS is value delivery system.   provided low cost legal solutions for the big three who distribute more than 90% of US is the United States of America.   drugs and medical supplies: McKesson, Amerisource, Cardinal; leaving Rochester Drug Cooperative as the typical fall guy (Apr 2019)
  
• Analysis suggests Amazon may not succeed in disruption of prescription drug distribution.  PillPack needs relationships with PBM is pharmacy benefit manager.  These companies, such as Caremark, were often originally PPMs.  PBMs are used by payers, such as insurance plans, to manage drug provision from pharmacies to the payer's plans subscribers.  PBMs can constrain drug flow to the pharmacies: CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens; through the PBM's formularies. 
  s: Express Scripts (which must renew in July and is owned by Cigna), CVS (strategy and responds to Amazon's move into prescription drug sales), distributor: AmerisourceBergen (part owned by Walgreens) (Jul 2018)
  
• Puerto Rico hurricane damage disrupts producers: AdvaMed, Baxter, J&J/Janssen, Mylan; medical supply chain for 40 drugs: Humira, Xarelto, methotrexate is a chemotherapy drug developed in 1947 and used to treat cancer: breast, leukemia, lung, lymphoma, osteosarcoma; suppress the immune system, and as a treatment for ectopic pregnancy.  It is a W.H.O. essential medicine. 
  , Tylenol, Prezista, Baxter small saline, including 13 sole-source; and AdvaMed medical devices, produced by 10 companies, concerning F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.  's Gottlieb (Oct 2017)
  
• Viral delivery platforms for gene therapy is the deployment of genes into patient's cells to treat or prevent diseases.  It can be performed outside the body (ex vivo) or in place (in vivo).  It requires a vector such as a: Virus, Ligandal style nanoparticle, electric field (Jul 2018); to perform the deployment.  But viruses are: Difficult to sanitize (bringing in oncogenes etc.) and hard to target as needed,  Unable to target where the DNA is deployed into the target cell chromosomes, Key targets of the immune system.  The process is disease specific:
  • Blood cancers: NHL; can be treated with ex vivo CAR-T (Jul 2017, Oct 2017)
  • Cystic fibrosis requires a virus that infects the airways and then deploys a non-cystic fibrosis allele into the nucleus of the patient's cells.  The obstacles to this process have been challenging: 
    
  • The virus must not have any problematic effects.  In the case of cystic fibrosis one virus activated a cancer gene leaving several trial subjects with leukemia. 
    
  • Efficiency of delivery has to be very high and this has not proved possible as of 2015. 
    
  • The newly delivered DNA must remain intact and be replicated and transcribed.  This has not proved to be the case. 
    
  • The process has not been able to avoid an immune response.  Gene therapy has consequently been of limited value for cystic fibrosis.  
  • Hemophilia A and B; virus delivered in vivo therapies enter final stage trials (Aug 2018)
    
  • ADA based SCID was the first human treatment with gene therapy.  A normal ADA gene was inserted ex vivo into immune system cells.  Initially the updated cells did not live as long as needed. 
    
  • Sickle-cell anemia requires a non-sickle-cell trait allele of the hemoglobin gene to be vectored into the bone marrow of the affected person.  
  • T-lymphocyte DNA updates for: mutation induced autoimmune diseases, melanoma treatment; using gene editing delivered with an electric field. 
    
  , are proving difficult to produce: MilliporeSigma, Oxford BioMedica, BioMarin; constraining drug delivery: Novartis, Bluebird Bio (Nov 2017)
• Biomarin, Spark/Pfizer sees success with gene therapy is the deployment of genes into patient's cells to treat or prevent diseases.  It can be performed outside the body (ex vivo) or in place (in vivo).  It requires a vector such as a: Virus, Ligandal style nanoparticle, electric field (Jul 2018); to perform the deployment.  But viruses are: Difficult to sanitize (bringing in oncogenes etc.) and hard to target as needed,  Unable to target where the DNA is deployed into the target cell chromosomes, Key targets of the immune system.  The process is disease specific:
  • Blood cancers: NHL; can be treated with ex vivo CAR-T (Jul 2017, Oct 2017)
  • Cystic fibrosis requires a virus that infects the airways and then deploys a non-cystic fibrosis allele into the nucleus of the patient's cells.  The obstacles to this process have been challenging: 
    
  • The virus must not have any problematic effects.  In the case of cystic fibrosis one virus activated a cancer gene leaving several trial subjects with leukemia. 
    
  • Efficiency of delivery has to be very high and this has not proved possible as of 2015. 
    
  • The newly delivered DNA must remain intact and be replicated and transcribed.  This has not proved to be the case. 
    
  • The process has not been able to avoid an immune response.  Gene therapy has consequently been of limited value for cystic fibrosis.  
  • Hemophilia A and B; virus delivered in vivo therapies enter final stage trials (Aug 2018)
    
  • ADA based SCID was the first human treatment with gene therapy.  A normal ADA gene was inserted ex vivo into immune system cells.  Initially the updated cells did not live as long as needed. 
    
  • Sickle-cell anemia requires a non-sickle-cell trait allele of the hemoglobin gene to be vectored into the bone marrow of the affected person.  
  • T-lymphocyte DNA updates for: mutation induced autoimmune diseases, melanoma treatment; using gene editing delivered with an electric field. 
    
  for hemophilia is the inability to form blood clots.  There are multiple forms: A, B; with mutations of different clotting factor genes.  Traditional treatment: Advate; is expensive for the hemophiliacs (Jan 2016). Gene therapy holds the promise of replacing the defective somatic genes in the liver of the sufferer (Aug 2018). 
    A is due to problems with clotting factor VIII. 
  and B is due to problems with clotting factor IX. 
  .  The genes are deployed into the livers is an emergent cellular system providing metabolic: Dietary compound metabolism and signalling: After gorging on sugar-rich foods the liver releases FGF21 hormone to dampen further eating activity; Detoxification, Regulation of glucose through glycogen storage (asprosin signalling from white adipose tissue); clotting, immune, exocrine and endocrine functions.  It is supplied with oxygen-rich blood via the hepatic artery and blood rich in semi-processed foodstuffs from the intestines & spleen via the hepatic portal vein.  It is constructed from: Hepatocytes which swim in the blood to process it, BECs, Stromal cells, Hepatic stellate cells, Kupffer cells, and blood vessels.  The embryonic endoderm cells invade the mesoderm to form the liver bud.  Subsequently the liver bud vascularizes and is colonized by hematopoietic cells.  The liver operates on a daily cycle (Aug 2018) allowing it time to recover from the stress of processing toxic substances.  In a healthy adult liver cells do not divide significantly.  But in a damaged liver, the liver cells shift back to a neonatal state to re-enter the cell cycle and rebuild the liver.  There are over 100 disorders of the liver.  Obesity and diabetes are associated with increased prevalence of these liver disorders worldwide. 
  of hemophiliacs, using a virus - which inflammed the immune system has to support and protect an inventory of host cell types, detect and respond to invaders and maintain the symbiont equilibrium within the microbiome.  It detects microbes which have breached the secreted mucus barrier, driving them back and fortifying the barrier.  It culls species within the microbiome that are expanding beyond requirements.  It destroys invaders who make it into the internal transport networks.  As part of its initialization it has immune cells which suppress the main system to allow the microbiome to bootstrap.  The initial microbiome is tailored by the antibodies supplied from the mother's milk while breastfeeding.  The immune system consists of two main parts the older non-adaptive part and the newer adaptive part.  The adaptive part achieves this property by being schematically specified by DNA which is highly variable.  By rapid reproduction the system recombines the DNA variable regions in vast numbers of offspring cells which once they have been shown not to attack the host cell lines are used as templates for interacting with any foreign body (antigen).  When the immune cell's DNA hyper-variable regions are expressed as y-shaped antibody proteins they typically include some receptor like structures which match the surfaces of the typical antigen.  Once the antibody becomes bound to the antigen the immune system cells can destroy the invader. 
  .  After finding an Italian who produced 12 times the normal levels of factor IX, researchers could reduce the amount of virus needed to deploy spark's medication.  Treatment for A had to deploy a huge gene - too big a payload for an adeno-associated virus.  Over 15 years of chopping bits out of the gene that were not found to be essential, the payload has shrunk.  Final stage trials are just beginning.  Biomarin trial for A increased factor VIII for a year but its level dropped in the second year.  Spark's trial only raised factor IX to 35% of normal, but the level has stayed steady for two years.  (Aug 2018)
  
• Startups: Capsule, DispatchHealth, Dose Healthcare, Heal, I.V. Doc, MedZed, Pager; with funding from: IRA Capital, Questa Capital, Alta Partners, Angels: Paul Jacobs, Lionel Ritchie; aim to be the Uber of healthcare, treating nonemergency problems: prescriptions, strep throat, sprained ankle; but hurdles are high: state based regulations, insurance costs, health care network is powerful and hard to integrate with; although health insurers are offering on demand: Anthem, Health Net, Blue Shield initially developed in the early 1930s to provide health insurance for physician visits.  , Aetna, CareFirst, United Healthcare, Cigna, Medicare is a social insurance program that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and over, and younger people with disabilities and end stage renal disease or ALS.  Medicare is currently missing a cap on out-of-pocket costs and direct prescription drug coverage.  It includes:
  
  • Benefits
  • Part A: Hospital inpatient insurance.  As of Dec 2013 Medicare pays for home care in only limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization.  Part A covers 20 days of inpatient rehabilitation at a SNF after discharge from inpatient care at a hospital. 
    
  • Part B: Medical insurance for non-hospital services including: doctor visits, tests, injectable drugs, ambulances, physical therapy;
    
  • Part C: Medicare Advantage 
  • Part D: indirect prescription drug coverage The MMA prohibits Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. 
    
  • Eligibility
    
  • All persons 65 years of age or older who are legal residents for at least 5 years.  If they or a spouse have paid Medicare taxes for 10 years the Medicare part A payments are waived.  Medicare is legislated to become the primary health plan. 
    
  • Persons under 65 with disabilities who receive SSDI. 
    
  • Persons with specific medical conditions:
  • Have end stage renal disease or need a kidney transplant. 
    
  • They have ALS. 
    
  • Some beneficiaries are dual eligible. 
    
  • Part A requires the person has been admitted as an inpatient at a hospital.  This is constrained by a rule that they stay for three days after admission.  
    
  • Sign-up
  • Part A has automatic sign-up if the person is drawing social security.  Otherwise the person must sign-up for Part A and Part B. 
    
  • Should sign-up for Part B during the Initial Enrollment Period, of seven months centered around 65th birthday, online or at a social security office.  But if still covered by spouse's insurance or not yet retired then may only join during the 3 month general enrollment period (January to March) each year, with coverage initiated the following July.  Incremental yearly 10% penalties apply for not signing up at 65.  These penalties apply to all subsequent premiums. 
    
  • Premiums
  • Part A premium
  • Part B insurance premium
    
  • Part C & D premiums are set by the commercial insurer.  
  ; cover Heal visits in many PPO plans preferred provider organization health plan allows direct access to any health specialist although there is typically a network of contracted specialists as opposed to a HMO health plan.    for chronic hypertension is high blood pressure.  It is directly associated with death rate due to pressure induced damage to the left ventricle and in general to cardiovascular diseases.  Treated with antihypertensives: Diuretics, Calcium channel blockers, Angiotensin receptor blockers or Beta blockers.   and diabetes includes type 1 and type 2.  Common side effects include: increased heart disease, hypertension, kidney disease, vision loss, nerve damage, and infections. 
  ; risks, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring.  It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system.  As such it is different from uncertainty. 
  are significant and powerful tech companies are also interested: Amazon through PillPack, Apple, Alphabet (Feb 2019)
  
• Lifestyle medicine sites: Hers, Keeps, Kick Health, Roman and Hims, Nurx; are allowing people to self-diagnose and pick drugs.  Doctors then act as gate keepers to the fulfillment of the request.  The sites do off label prescription offers, which may get them in trouble with states who usually require a relationship between the doctor and patient before the doctor goes off label.  Sites argue they do not provide health care directly.  Investors are keen and advisors are helping the sites (Apr 2019)
  
• Science leverage
  
• Electric field found to be quick acting replacement for viral delivery platforms, allowing CRISPR is clustered replicating interspersed silent palindromic repeats; a technique for exact targeting, cutting and editing of DNA based on leveraging bacterial enzymatic defenses against viruses generalized to any DNA sequence in a prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell.  It was identified during studies of a bacterial adaptive immune system.  In that system bacterial proteins grab parts of a virus that has infected them and record it within the palindromic structures that mark an array of inserted viral DNA used as a log persisted over generations.  If a new infection occurs the viral DNA is compared with the sequences and if a match exists the CAS proteins break up the viral DNA initiating its destruction.  This bacterial system was then updated and repurposed by the researchers to support targeted genetic engineering.  As explained by Dr. Doudna, the CRISPR proteins and the 20 nucleotide RNA template migrate into the nucleus where they rapidly target DNA which complements the RNA template and the Cas9 enzyme performs the edits.  Being a bacterial system CRISPR Cas9 does not target eukaryotic heterochromatic DNA well.  It is not fully understood how they find the target sequence so quickly.  It has been shown that Cas9 will bind to sites with a 5-8 base match but then it releases rapidly without cutting.  To cut, Cas9 has to reconfigure, which does not occur in the mismatch situations.   introduction to T-cells are a type of leukocyte.  They appear mainly in the lymphatic network.  Their are various types:
  • B cells which make antibodies that bind to pathogens, and activate the complement system.  When malignant these cells can produce multiple myeloma. 
    
  • Natural killer cells can kill body cells that do not display MHC class 1 molecules, or do display stress markers including MIC-A. 
    
  • T cells including CD4+ helper cells, Cytotoxic T cells, Gamma 5 T cells; 
    
  for DNA (DNA), a polymer composed of a chain of deoxy ribose sugars with purine or pyrimidine side chains.  DNA naturally forms into helical pairs with the side chains stacked in the center of the helix.  It is a natural form of schematic string.  The purines and pyrimidines couple so that AT and GC pairs make up the stackable items.  A code of triplets of base pairs (enabling 64 separate items to be named) has evolved which now redundantly represents each of the 20 amino-acids that are deployed into proteins, along with triplets representing the termination sequence.  Chemical modifications and histone binding (chromatin) allow cells to represent state directly on the DNA schema.  To cope with inconsistencies in the cell wide state second messenger and evolved amplification strategies are used. 
  editing, in major scientific advance by UCSF/UC Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute's Dr. Marson.  In-vitro, T-cells were programmed to: recognize melanoma is a cancer of the melanocytes.  It is a less common form of skin cancer but is the most deadly once it has invaded deeply into layers of skin.  It is primarily caused by UV light.  It is tied to mutations in the signalling pathway (BRAF) and regulatory genes (P53) with a key dependency on crestin reactivation (Jan 2016).   cells, and help children with autoimmune disease include: celiac disease, eczema, IBD, lupus, multiple sclerosis, type-1-diabetes; are often debilitating and life long conditions.  Autoimmune diseases are increasing in prevalence rapidly over two or three generations in advanced societies.  One in thirteen Americans has an autoimmune condition.  Some are associated with gene alleles encoding the immune system.  Stress is associated with increased autoimmune problems (Jan 2017)
  caused by rare mutations.  Therapies may follow shortly including for HIV is human immunodeficiency virus, an RNA retrovirus which causes AIDS.  It infects T-lymphocytes destroying the host's immune system.  Some HIV's enter the lymphocytes by leveraging the T cells CCR5 protein.  The HIV X4 variant leverages CXCR4. 
  (Jul 2018)
• Marshmallow is Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel's experiment studying gratification postponement.  A child is presented with a marshmallow and told that the experimenter is leaving the room and if the child doesn't eat the marshmallow before the experimenter returns he will be given another.  The child is then observed through a two way mirror.  Only a third of the children lasted the fifteen minutes.  To achieve the task the children had to: Trust in the system, avoid hot ideation of the marshmallow, or displace it with cold ideation of the marshmallow or hot ideation of some other object.   It was performed on three to six year olds, but subsequently predicted their SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  The complexity of the experiment allowed uncertainty to limit the generality of Mischel's conclusions. 
  study promoting willpower is required to defer an immediate reward for a larger delayed reward.  Such self-control is associated with the frontal cortex.  Contemplating the immediate reward activates the mesolimbic dopamine pathway - limbic targets.  Contemplating the delayed rewards activates the mesocortical dopamine pathway - frontal cortex targets. 
  as a signal of later success, found hard to corroborate across a broad group in longitudinal study by NYU's Tyler Watts and UC Irvine's Greg Duncan & Hoanan Quan (Jun 2018)
  
• Hedge fund is an investment fund that accepts investments from a limited number of accredited individual or institutional investors.  Hedge funds are able to use investment methods that are not allowed for other types of fund. 
  Elliott Management reported to take activist stake in Alexion Pharmaceutical (Dec 2017)
  
• Private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  is buying up high profit dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with skin, hair, nails and their diseases.  Dermatology includes cosmetic and medical branches including pathology.  Mohs surgery focuses on skin cancer.  Tele medicine is allowing non-dermatologists to send details of a patient to an off-site dermatologist.   practices: Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery, Schweiger Dermatology, United Skin Specialists.  A peer reviewed paper describing the purchase of high throughput, and high billing, practices, that generate significant profit, was removed from the AAD is the American academy of Dermatology. 
  website after powerful dermatologists linked to private equity complained (Oct 2018)
  
• State and local governments are working with private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  companies to restructure the value delivery systems that can finance infrastructure, operate it and leverage it.  Loan providers, infrastructure developers: housing, rail, EMS is emergency medical services providing ambulance and critical care transport. 
  ; and operators are being deployed (Jul 2016). 
• Hedge funds is an investment fund that accepts investments from a limited number of accredited individual or institutional investors.  Hedge funds are able to use investment methods that are not allowed for other types of fund. 
  : EJF, Melody Capital Partners; Banks: DZ Bank; provide finance to loan arrangers: Law Cash, Banyan Finance, Medstar Funding; driving loans to perform surgeries: Earle Pescatore; that increase the likely size of evolved amplifier, coordinated by: Surgical Assistance; leveraging marketing operations: Conferences, business development, web and tele sales; to increase litigant capture and payouts in personal injury suits, organized by lawyers: Alpha Law, McSweeney Langevin; against device manufacturers: Boston Scientific, J&J; for pelvic mesh implants.  The removal of the implants that bond with living tissue is highly risky, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring.  It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system.  As such it is different from uncertainty. 
  . (Apr 2018)
• Personal injury mass-tort financing strategy expands at hedge funds is an investment fund that accepts investments from a limited number of accredited individual or institutional investors.  Hedge funds are able to use investment methods that are not allowed for other types of fund. 
  : EJF, Fir Tree Partners (Deer Finance), Fortress, Pravati, Virage; and private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  : Blackstone (DRB Capital), PIMCO; with state and federal authorities and Congress studying what is going on (Jun 2018)
• Appleby leak shows how investment advisers such as: Quintana Capital Group; helped university endowments: Indiana University, Texas Christian University, Colgate, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, University of Texas, University of Southern California, University of Alabama, DePauw, Northeastern, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Reed College, Rutgers, Syracuse, Texas Tech and Washington State; use offshore blocker corporations are used to place a legal entity between the highly leveraged activities of hedge funds and private equity companies and their clients.  The structure avoids a federal tax on returns derived from borrowed money, which was designed to prevent nonprofits from competing unfairly with for-profit businesses.  It effectively blocks any taxable income from flowing to the clients who include US university endowments (Nov 2017).  The blocker corporations are setup in a low tax domicile such as the Cayman Islands or British Virgin Islands.  : H&F investors, TX Liquidity Capital; limiting taxable profit flows to the endowments from their private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  funds: EnCap Investments, Genstar Capital, Hellman & Friedman; that: limit taxes, obscure unpalatable investments: Oil, Gas & Ferrous Resources; successfully (Nov 2017)
  
• CalPERS paid $3.4 billion to private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  firms: Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle (Nov 2015)
• CalPERS best returns from private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  : Apollo, Blackstone, K.K.R. (Dec 2015)
  
• World Bank was setup as part of the Bretton Woods agreements, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to repair and reconstruct Europe after the Second World War and as the World Bank continues to provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies. It includes:
  • International Finance Corporation 
  president Kim aims to transform the organization, to gain leverage from Wall Street and support from the US is the United States of America.   government.  Coached by private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  titans from: Apollo, Carlyle (Jan 2018)
  
• Dubai private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  Abraaj Group focused on the developing world, including $1 billion health care fund; is accused of misusing funds by investors: World Bank was setup as part of the Bretton Woods agreements, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to repair and reconstruct Europe after the Second World War and as the World Bank continues to provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies. It includes:
  • International Finance Corporation 
  , Gates Foundation; (Feb 2018)
  
• Global
• Global cancer is the out-of-control growth of cells, which have stopped obeying their cooperative schematic planning and signalling infrastructure.  It results from compounded: oncogene, tumor suppressor, DNA caretaker; mutations in the DNA.  In 2010 one third of Americans are likely to die of cancer.  Cell division rates did not predict likelihood of cancer.  Viral infections are associated.  Radiation and carcinogen exposure are associated.  Lifestyle impacts the likelihood of cancer occurring: Drinking alcohol to excess, lack of exercise, Obesity, Smoking, More sun than your evolved melanin protection level; all significantly increase the risk of cancer occurring (Jul 2016). 
  VDS is value delivery system.  : ACS, CHAI, NCCN, IBM (Watson), Pfizer, Cipla; will build low cost supply chain and delivery network to combat a W.H.O. is World Health Organization a United Nations organization.   estimated increasing number of cancer sufferers in Africa (Oct 2017)
• The Doctor's value chain includes:
• Diagnosis
  
• Foundation medicine
  
• SynapDx 
• Lifestyle medicine sites: Hers, Keeps, Kick Health, Roman and Hims, Nurx; are allowing people to self-diagnose and pick drugs.  Doctors then act as gate keepers to the fulfillment of the request.  The sites do off label prescription offers, which may get them in trouble with states who usually require a relationship between the doctor and patient before the doctor goes off label.  Sites argue they do not provide health care directly.  Investors are keen and advisors are helping the sites (Apr 2019)
  
• Helix sets up network of direct-to-consumer genomic testing uses genomic analysis to diagnose genetic disorders - for example Genomic Health's Oncotype DX & Agendia's MammaPrint.  The desire to see the genetic risk factors identified by such tests should depend on the risk * burden * Possibility of intervention.  Early tests look at only single gene mutations, but big data research tools are showing promise with large gene algorithms (Aug 2018).  Genomic testing can be performed direct-to-consumer.  Data is being collated on the genetic components of most diseases to enable more sophisticated diagnosis in the future such as the OPHG (EGAPP initiative), USPSTF recommendations and NCBI (Genetic test registry).  While there is only limited identification of the significant mutations and limited patient bases misdiagnosis is a problem (Aug 2016). 
  including Geisinger (Oct 2017)
  
• Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Genomic Medicine director, Dr. Kathiresan, and MGH & Broad Institute cardiologist is the diagnosis and treatment of: Congenital heart defects, CAD, Heart failure, Valvular heart disease; by cardiologists.   Dr. Amit Khera, report, in Nature Genetics, developing a big data encompasses the IT systems and processes necessary to do population based data collection, management and analysis.  The very low cost, robust, data storage organized by infrastructure: HADOOP; allows digital data to be stored en mass.  Data scientists then apply assumptions about the world to the data, analogous to evolved mechanisms in vision, in the form of algorithms: Precision medicine, Protein folding modeling (Feb 2019) assumes coevolutionary methods can be applied to identify contact points in a protein's tertiary structure.  Rather than depending on averages, analysis at Verisk drills down to specifics and then highlights modeling problems by identifying the underlying CAS.  For the analysis to be useful it requires a hierarchy of supporting BI infrastructure:
  • Analytics utilization and integration delivered via SaaS and the Cloud to cope with the silos and data intensive nature. 
    
  • Analytics tools (BI) for PHM will be hard to develop.  
  • Complex data models must include clinical aspects of the patient specific data, including disease state population wide.  
  • A key aspect is providing clear signals about the nature of the data using data visualization. 
    
  • Data communication with the ability to exchange and transact.  HIEs and EMPI alliance approaches are all struggling to provide effective exchange. 
    
  • Data labeling and secure access and retreival.  While HIPAA was initially drafted as a secure MPI the index was removed from the legislation leaving the US without such a tool.  Silos imply that the security architecture will need to be robust. 
    
  • Raw data scrubbing, restructuring and standardization.  Even financial data is having to be restandarized shifting from ICD-9 to -10.  The intent is to transform the unstructured data via OCR and NLP to structured records to support the analytics process. 
    
  • Raw data warehousing is distributed across silos including PCP, Hospital system and network, cloud and SaaS for process, clinical and financial data. 
    
  • Data collection from the patient's proximate environment as well as provider CPOE, EHRs, workflow and process infrastructure.  The integration of the EHR into a big data collection tool is key. 
    
  tool, based on the UK Biobank and then cross checking for validity with: East Asian, South Asian, African American and Hispanics; and 20,000 people from Brigham & Women's, that uses 6.6 million base pair positions to identify increased risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring.  It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system.  As such it is different from uncertainty. 
  of: heart disease is cardiovascular disease which refers to:
  • Conditions where narrowed and blocked blood vessels result in angina, hypertension, CHD and heart attacks and hemorrhagic/ischemic strokes.  Mutations of the gene PCSK9 have been implicated in cardiovascular disease.  Rare families with dominant inheritence of the mutations have an overactive protein, very high levels of blood cholesterol and cardiac disease. Other rare PCSK9 mutations result in an 88% reduced risk from heart disease.  Inflammation is associated with cardiovascular disease (Aug 2017). 
    
  , breast cancer is a variety of different cancerous conditions of the breast tissue.  World wide it is the leading type of cancer in women and is 100 times more common in women than men.  260,000 new cases of breast cancer will occur in the US in 2018 causing 41,000 deaths.  The varieties include: Hormone sensitive tumors that test negative for her2 (the most common type affecting three quarters of breast cancers in the US, BRCA1/2 positive, ductal carcinomas including DCIS, lobular carcinomas including LCIS.  Receptor presence on the cancer cells is used as a classification: Her2+/-, estrogen (ER)+/-, progesterone (PR)+/-.  Metastasis classes the cancer as stage 4.  Genetic risk factors include: BRCA, p53, PTEN, STK11, CHEK2, ATM, GATA3, BRIP1 and PALB2.  Treatments include: Tamoxifen, Raloxifene; where worrying racial disparities have been found (Dec 2013).  International studies indicate early stage breast cancer typed by a genomic test: Oncotype DX, MammaPrint; can be treated without chemotherapy (Aug 2016, Jun 2018), Type 2 diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, limb amputations and kidney failure.  It is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.  Insulin and glucose levels are regulated by the pancreas, liver, muscle, brain and fat.  Diabetes occurs when the insulin level is insufficient to regulate the glucose in the system.  As we age our muscles become less sensitive to insulin and the pancreas responds by increasing the amount generated.  Increased fat levels in obesity demand more insulin overloading the pancreas.  Persistent high glucose levels are also toxic to the pancreas beta cells.  High glucocorticoid levels have been associated with type 2 diabetes.  There are genetic risk factors since siblings of someone with the disease have three times the baseline risk (about 50% of the risk of getting type 2 diabetes is genetic).  The inheritance is polygenic.  More than 20 genes have been identified as risk factors, but that is too few to account for the 50% weighting so many more will be identified.  Of those identified so far many are associated with the beta cells.  The one with the strongest relative risk is TCF7L2.  The disease can be effectively controlled through a diligent application of treatments and regular checkups.  Doctors are monitored for how under control their patients' diabetes is (Sep 2015).  Treatments include:
  • Metformin - does not change the course of pre-diabetes - if you stop taking it, it is as if it hasn't been taken. 
    
  • Diet
  • Exercise
  , Chronic IBD is inflammatory bowel disease, which is a chronic inflammation of part of the digestive tract.  It includes Crohn's disease and Ulcerative colitis.  Johns Hopkins's Bayless noted it differs from irritable bowel syndrome - they require different treatments.  Symptoms include: Severe diarrhea, Pain, Fatigue & weight loss.  It typically begins in the teens or twenties.  Incidence has increased exponentially since 1945 in developed countries.  160 genes have been associated with IBD.  These genes all relate to: Producing mucus, solidifying the lining of the gut, or regulating the immune system.  The rapid increase in the incidence of IBD can be explained by societal impacts on the gut microbiome which interacts with these genes and their products.  No particular culprit has been found.  It is probably an ecological shift away from symbiosis.  There is a shift from fibre-fermenters: Faecalibaterium prausnitzii, Bacteroides fragilis; to: Fusobacterium nucleatum, Escherichia coli; which are more inflammatory.  The trigger for disease appears complex: Less early infections with tapeworms, bacteria & viruses, Smaller families - which are typically cleaner, More urban environments - resulting in less contact with higher animals, Less pets, Antibiotics, Endocrine disrupters, Caeserean births, Formula fed babies - rather than breast milk; all potentially contributing to the altered setup and operation of the immune system and microbiome.  , AF is atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm: rapid, irregular.  It:
  • Can lead to blood clots, stroke, CHF, dementia and other complications.  
  • Fibrillations allow blood to pool in the heart chambers and form small clots which can then lodge in small arteries and block blood flow. 
    
  • Has become much more common being induced by endemic diseases: hypertension, obesity and type-2-diabetes. 
    
  • Cocoa reduces risk of AF (May 2017)
  • Treatments include: digoxin;
    
  ; accessible via a web site (Aug 2018)
  
• But
  
• Early genomic testing uses genomic analysis to diagnose genetic disorders - for example Genomic Health's Oncotype DX & Agendia's MammaPrint.  The desire to see the genetic risk factors identified by such tests should depend on the risk * burden * Possibility of intervention.  Early tests look at only single gene mutations, but big data research tools are showing promise with large gene algorithms (Aug 2018).  Genomic testing can be performed direct-to-consumer.  Data is being collated on the genetic components of most diseases to enable more sophisticated diagnosis in the future such as the OPHG (EGAPP initiative), USPSTF recommendations and NCBI (Genetic test registry).  While there is only limited identification of the significant mutations and limited patient bases misdiagnosis is a problem (Aug 2016). 
  misdiagnosis (Aug 2016). 
  
• Health mutation analysis companies: Promethease; use 23andMe profile to analyze for disease generating mutations, but the process is not an approved diagnosis: 23andMe legitimately only runs their sequencers describes methods of DNA sequencing, that replace traditional Sanger sequencing, which have been implemented in commercial DNA sequencers after 2000.  The methods include:
  • Base-by-base is stepwise sequencing where there are 3' removable blockers on the DNA arrays. 
    
  • Pyrosequencing,  
  • Sequencing by synthesis,
    
  • Sequencing by ligation,
    
  • SMRT,
    
  • DNA colony sequencing,
  • DNA nanoball, 
  • Nanopore sequencing,
    
  • MPSS was the first of the next generation sequencing methods,
  • Polony sequencing.  
  on limited sequences of the raw DNA (DNA), a polymer composed of a chain of deoxy ribose sugars with purine or pyrimidine side chains.  DNA naturally forms into helical pairs with the side chains stacked in the center of the helix.  It is a natural form of schematic string.  The purines and pyrimidines couple so that AT and GC pairs make up the stackable items.  A code of triplets of base pairs (enabling 64 separate items to be named) has evolved which now redundantly represents each of the 20 amino-acids that are deployed into proteins, along with triplets representing the termination sequence.  Chemical modifications and histone binding (chromatin) allow cells to represent state directly on the DNA schema.  To cope with inconsistencies in the cell wide state second messenger and evolved amplification strategies are used. 
  , to keep the processing time and cost down, the analysis companies then compound the risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring.  It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system.  As such it is different from uncertainty. 
  of false positives & negatives, using comparison databases that can contain errors.  While consumers are warned of the situation it is not clear that they understand the implications.  F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.   approved diagnostic laboratories have to be much more rigorous about the bredth of DNA analysed, the accuracy of the data bases they reference, and the validation steps taken (Jul 2018)
• Invitae funded study indicates 23andMe consumer test is not effective for BRCA is breast cancer type 1 or 2 susceptibility gene.  The two types provide related cellular functions maintaining the validity of the cell.  If either gene product fails there is an increased likelihood of cancer.  Still individuals with mutations in BRCA1/2 genes account for only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers.  The:  
  • Type 1 gene codes for a protein that supports DNA repair and where this is not possible can stimulate cell death.  Hence if the protein becomes defective one or both of these key caretaker functions may stop and increase the susceptibility to cancer.  The BRCA1 protein has multiple actions.  It:
    
  • Combines with other tumor suppressors, DNA damage sensors and cellular signal transducers to form the BASC surveillance complex monitoring the health of the cells DNA. 
    
  • Associates with RNA pol II to support transcription. 
    
  • Interacts with histone deacetylase to regulate transcription.  
  • It is a marker of high risk of breast and uterine cancer. 
    
  • It was collaboratively researched by Dr. Mary-Claire King and Francis Collins's labs studying chromosome 17 using genomics.  
  • In 1990 Dr. King had reported to ASHG evidence of 'this' single gene linked to a highly heritable form of breast cancer.  
  • Over the next two years the labs gathered details of BRCA1, allowing families with the mutation to understand their individual risk and plan for their futures.  
  • In 1993 BRCA1 was identified by Mark Skolnick of Myriad Genetics. 
    
  • Type 2 gene codes for a protein that binds both single stranded DNA and the recombinase RAD51 to facilitate homologous recombination.  
  • Advice from Dr. Collins, for families who have a history of breast or ovarian cancer includes:
  • Counselling women with the high risk BRCA mutations, about the risk of breast and ovarian cancer and the treatments available
  • Telling women who choose watchful waiting to have periodic MRIs.  And warn that watchful waiting is unreliable for ovarian cancer allowing metastasis before detection.  
  • Prophylactically removing the ovaries and Fallopian tubes on completion of childbearing.  
  • Teaching about breast reconstruction and recommending prophylactic mastectomy.  
  • Males with BRCA mutations should have careful surveillance for: Prostate, Pancreatic and breast cancer.  
  • No one being given the test without being fully counselled beforehand about the implications of the result.  Negative results may bring survivor guilt while positive results will need careful management.  
  breast cancer is a variety of different cancerous conditions of the breast tissue.  World wide it is the leading type of cancer in women and is 100 times more common in women than men.  260,000 new cases of breast cancer will occur in the US in 2018 causing 41,000 deaths.  The varieties include: Hormone sensitive tumors that test negative for her2 (the most common type affecting three quarters of breast cancers in the US, BRCA1/2 positive, ductal carcinomas including DCIS, lobular carcinomas including LCIS.  Receptor presence on the cancer cells is used as a classification: Her2+/-, estrogen (ER)+/-, progesterone (PR)+/-.  Metastasis classes the cancer as stage 4.  Genetic risk factors include: BRCA, p53, PTEN, STK11, CHEK2, ATM, GATA3, BRIP1 and PALB2.  Treatments include: Tamoxifen, Raloxifene; where worrying racial disparities have been found (Dec 2013).  International studies indicate early stage breast cancer typed by a genomic test: Oncotype DX, MammaPrint; can be treated without chemotherapy (Aug 2016, Jun 2018) analysis, generating false negatives, - only looking for 3 Ashkenazi Jewish mutations instead of thousands that other women may suffer from, conflicting with prior F.D.A. Food and Drug Administration.   approval of the direct to consumer approach (Apr 2019)
  
• Undermined by:
  
• Reimbursement system problem (Oct 2015)
• Infectious disease specialists are poorly reimbursed is the payment process for much of US health care.  Reimbursement is the centralizing mechanism in the US Health care network.  It associates reward flows with central planning requirements such as HITECH.  Different payment methods apportion risk differently between the payer and the provider.  The payment methods include:
  • Fee-for-service,
    
  • Per Diem,
    
  • Episode of Care Payment, 
  • Multi-provider bundled EPC,
    
  • Condition-specific capitation,
    
  • Full capitation.  
  , by payers include four types:
  • From the 1930s the insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield catalyzed health care activity by paying a daily per diem to hospitals for the diagnoses and treatments the hospital's dispensed.  At their inception in 1966 Medicare and Medicaid followed this reimbursement model. 
  • From 1983 Medicare and Medicaid switched to the PPS reimbursement mechanism.  This forced alignment of the supplier, diagnosis, treatment, billing and reimbursement processes.  The health care network is still structurally aligned around PPS.  Under scrutiny of ProPAC and its successor MedPAC,  as well as pressure of the BBA after 1997, the payments per DRG have been steadily reduced until it was below the cost of care, forcing hospitals to seek margin from their other payers.  Medicare outlier payments benefited hospitals that inflated charges and thus became eligible. 
    
  • Employers as they experienced cost shifting from the hospital's increased product charges moved their employees over to managed care based payment. 
  • Private payers pay hospitals directly for their diagnosis and treatment.  Typically this group has little power.  There are default rates for private payers - typically 40% of billed charges that are not covered by a fixed payment or a fee schedule.  For the uninsured poor until 2004 they obtained little discount on the hospital's chargemaster list price, because insurers and CMS required to be charged the lowest value offered to any patients.  Medicare has now relaxed this constraint. 
  , for what they do, and the specialty is failing to attract enough trainees to respond to antibiotic resistance results from evolutionary pressure of antibiotics, supported by plasmids and R factors: NDN1; which encode resistance properties for otherwise lethal antibiotics.  World leaders hope cooperation can preserve the power of last resort antibiotics: Carbapenems, Colistin (Oct 2016).  Worrying trends include: C. auris resistance to medical antifungals: itraconazole; as well as azole agricultural fungicides (Apr 2019), CRE (May 2016), C. diff (May 2015), MDR & XDR TB; resulting in increased risk of sepsis and death.  The World Bank estimates full resistance would reduce the global economy in 2050 by between 1.1 and 3.8%. 
  and leverage infection control works to prevent healthcare-associated infections.  It monitors & supports associated hospital processes: Anti-microbial surfaces, Barrier clothing, Cleaning, Disinfection, Hand washing: North shore; Patient access during epidemics, Sterilization; to contain cross infection.  The CDC provides support: Ebola process; and works closely with the primary biocontainment unit at Emory University Hospital. 
  (Apr 2019)
• Treatment
• University of Pennsylvania's Ezekiel Emanuel notes senior cardiologists associated with higher mortality in patients (Nov 2015)
• Lab 
• Active surveillance with genomic tests (Dec 2015)
  
• IT
  
• Medical records
• Billing
  
• Payment
  
• The Surgeon's value chain includes:
• Anesthesiologist
  
• EMR refers to electronic medical records which are a synonym of EHR.  EMRs have strengths and weaknesses:
  • The EHR provides an integrated record of the health systems notes on a patient including: Diagnosis and Treatment plans and protocols followed, Prescribed drugs with doses, Adverse drug reactions;
  • The EHR does not necessarily reflect the patient's situation accurately. 
    
  • The EHR often acts as a catch-all.  There is often little time for a doctor, newly attending the patient, to review and validate the historic details. 
    
  • The meaningful use requirements of HITECH and Medicare/Medicaid specify compliance of an EHR system or EHR module for specific environments such as an ambulatory or hospital in-patient setting. 
    
  • As of 2016 interfacing with the EHR is cumbersome and undermines face-to-face time between doctor and patient.  Doctors are allocated 12 minutes to interact with a patient of which less than five minutes was used for recording hand written notes.  With the EHR 12 minutes may be required to update the record!
    
  (Medication list, Medication allergy include various conditions: hay fever, food allergies: MMA, Peanut; atopic dermatitis, asthma, and anaphylaxis; caused by over activity of the immune system in response to antigens in the proximate environment.  Initially associated with the English upper-class, allergies have spread across the population with general adoption of: small family size, cleanliness, antibiotic use, public health programs; in line with the hygiene hypothesis, with newborns no longer getting exposed to antigens by their older siblings and proximate higher animals. 
  list)
  
• Lab
  
• IT
• EMR (Problem list, lab test results)
  
• Surgery scheduling 
• Billing
  
• Payment 
• Finance
  
• Private equity is the pooling of commitments from fund investors, to: buy assets that are not publicly traded: companies, real estate, and debt; improve their acquisition's value and sell them again, returning the sale cash to the fund investors.  Private equity companies gain competitive advantage from being lightly regulated, and wealth from the fees and special tax privileges.  Private equity companies were initially corporate raiders. 
  is buying up high profit dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with skin, hair, nails and their diseases.  Dermatology includes cosmetic and medical branches including pathology.  Mohs surgery focuses on skin cancer.  Tele medicine is allowing non-dermatologists to send details of a patient to an off-site dermatologist.   practices: Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery, Schweiger Dermatology, United Skin Specialists.  A peer reviewed paper describing the purchase of high throughput, and high billing, practices, that generate significant profit, was removed from the AAD is the American academy of Dermatology. 
  website after powerful dermatologists linked to private equity complained (Oct 2018)
  

Margin

USA funnel model

Value Chain

Enterprise structure 

End-to-end Product & Consulting/Services

Operating business units

Services organization

Core business

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<awffwranddexample James>

<awffwranddexample Jim>

Programs

Partner program

Systems and Solutions Marketing

Corporate Regional marketing

NA Marketing

Sales training

Sales

<awffwsalesexample1>

Corporate accounts

Geographic

Consulting

Education

Support

Marketing communications system

Marketing communications specialists

Analysts

<awffwanalystexample1>

Business Analyst relations

Analyst feedback

Public Relations

PR

Press relations

Agents

Competitor research

Publishing & events

Financial systems

Venture funds

Accel Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors, Austin Ventures, Brentwood, Bowman Capital Management, Comdisco, Grosvenor, Kinetic Ventures, Matrix Partners, Meritech, J.P. Morgan, New enterprise associates, North Bridge Venture Partners, Oak, Pequot Capital, Sprout Group, TechnoInvest, Worldview Technology Partners

Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)

Incubators

Value Delivery Systems: