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Southwest Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowships
In Memoriam

News

Last 50 News Postings

 (Click on title to be directed to posting, most recent listed first)

Former US Surgeon General Criticizing $5,000 Emergency Room Bill
Nurses Launch Billboard Campaign Against Renewal of Desert Regional
   Medical Center Lease
$1 Billion Donation Eliminates Tuition at Albert Einstein Medical School
Kern County Hospital Authority Accused of Overpaying for Executive
   Services
SWJPCCS Associate Editor has Essay on Reining in Air Pollution Published
   in NY Times
Amazon Launches New Messaged-Based Virtual Healthcare Service
Hospitals Say They Lose Money on Medicare Patients but Make Millions
Trust in Science Now Deeply Polarized
SWJPCC Associate Editor Featured in Albuquerque Journal
Poisoning by Hand Sanitizers
Healthcare Layoffs During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Practice Fusion Admits to Opioid Kickback Scheme
Arizona Medical Schools Offer Free Tuition for Primary Care Commitment
Determining if Drug Price Increases are Justified
Court Overturns CMS' Site-Neutral Payment Policy
Pulmonary Disease Linked to Vaping
CEO Compensation-One Reason Healthcare Costs So Much
Doctor or Money Shortage in California?
FDA Commissioner Gottlieb Resigns
Physicians Generate an Average $2.4 Million a Year Per Hospital
Drug Prices Continue to Rise
New Center for Physician Rights
CMS Decreases Clinic Visit Payments to Hospital-Employed Physicians
   and Expands Decreases in Drug Payments 340B Cuts
Big Pharma Gives Millions to Congress
Gilbert Hospital and Florence Hospital at Anthem Closed
CMS’ Star Ratings Miscalculated
VA Announces Aggressive New Approach to Produce Rapid Improvements
   in VA Medical Centers
Healthcare Payments Under the Budget Deal: Mostly Good News
   for Physicians
Hospitals Plan to Start Their Own Generic Drug Company
Flu Season and Trehalose
MedPAC Votes to Scrap MIPS
CMS Announces New Payment Model
Varenicline (Chantix®) Associated with Increased Cardiovascular Events
Tax Cuts Could Threaten Physicians
Trump Nominates Former Pharmaceutical Executive as HHS Secretary
Arizona Averages Over 25 Opioid Overdoses Per Day
Maryvale Hospital to Close
California Enacts Drug Pricing Transparency Bill
Senate Health Bill Lacks 50 Votes Needed to Proceed
Medi-Cal Blamed for Poor Care in Lawsuit
Senate Republican Leadership Releases Revised ACA Repeal and Replace Bill
Mortality Rate Will Likely Increase Under Senate Healthcare Bill
University of Arizona-Phoenix Receives Full Accreditation
Limited Choice of Obamacare Insurers in Some Parts of the Southwest
Gottlieb, the FDA and Dumbing Down Medicine
Salary Surveys Report Declines in Pulmonologist, Allergist and Nurse 
   Incomes
CDC Releases Ventilator-Associated Events Criteria
Medicare Bundled Payment Initiative Did Not Reduce COPD Readmissions
Younger Smokers Continue to Smoke as Adults: Implications for Raising the
   Smoking Age to 21
Most Drug Overdose Deaths from Nonprescription Opioids

 

 

For complete news listings click here.

 

The Southwest Journal of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep periodically publishes news articles relevant to  pulmonary, critical care or sleep medicine which are not covered by major medical journals.

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Entries in COPD (2)

Thursday
Jan112018

CMS Announces New Payment Model

On Tuesday, 1/9/18, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced a new voluntary bundled-payment model that will be considered an advanced alternative payment model under Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) (1). The new model is the first advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) to be introduced by the Trump administration. The Trump administration has been a vocal advocate of reducing administrative burden for clinicians and has touted voluntary models as a solution (2). The new, voluntary model comes less than two months after the CMS officially decided to eliminate two mandatory bundled-payment models created during the Obama administration.

Under the model, clinician payment will be based on quality measures during a 90-day episode of care. Participants must select at least one of the 32 clinical episodes to apply to the model. The inpatient clinical episodes are listed in Table 1 (3).

Table 1. Clinical inpatient episodes under proposed payment model.

  • Acute myocardial infarction
  • Back & neck except spinal fusion
  • Cardiac arrhythmia
  • Cardiac defibrillator
  • Cardiac valve
  • Cellulitis
  • Cervical spinal fusion
  • COPD, bronchitis, asthma
  • Combined anterior posterior spinal fusion
  • Congestive heart failure
  • Coronary artery bypass graft
  • Double joint replacement of the lower extremity
  • Fractures of the femur and hip or pelvis
  • Gastrointestinal hemorrhage
  • Gastrointestinal obstruction
  • Hip & femur procedures except major joint
  • Lower extremity/humerus procedure except hip, foot, femur
  • Major bowel procedure
  • Major joint replacement of the lower extremity
  • Major joint replacement of the upper extremity
  • Pacemaker
  • Percutaneous coronary intervention
  • Renal failure
  • Sepsis
  • Simple pneumonia and respiratory infections
  • Spinal fusion (non-cervical)
  • Stroke
  • Urinary tract infection

Providers will be eligible for bonuses based on their performance. For more information about the model and its requirements, or to download a Request for Applications document (RFA), the application template, and the necessary attachments, please visit: https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/bpci-advanced. Applications must be submitted via the Application Portal, which will close on 11:59 pm EST on March 12, 2018. Applications submitted via email will not be accepted.

The CMS Innovation Center will hold a Q&A Open Forum on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 from 12 pm – 1 pm EDT. This event is open to those who are interested in learning more about the model and how to apply. Please register in advance here - https://preaward.adobeconnect.com/e3cdwg6hgx9f/event/registration.html.

Richard A. Robbins, MD

Editor, SWJPCC

References

  1. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS announces new payment model to improve quality, coordination, and cost-effectiveness for both inpatient and outpatient care. January 9, 2018. Available at: https://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2018-Press-releases-items/2018-01-09.html (accessed 1/10/18).
  2. Castellucci M. CMS launches new voluntary bundled-payment model. Modern Healthcare. January 9, 2018. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20180109/NEWS/180109905 (accessed 1/10/18).
  3. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. BPCI Advanced. January 9, 2018. Available at: https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/bpci-advanced (accessed 1/10/18).

Cite as: Robbins RA. CMS announces new payment model. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2018;16(1):29-30. doi: https://doi.org/10.13175/swjpcc006-18 PDF 

Tuesday
Jan102017

Medicare Bundled Payment Initiative Did Not Reduce COPD Readmissions

Implementation of the Medicare bundled payments for care improvement initiative has failed to cut readmission rates following hospitalization for acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society (1).

Bhatt and colleagues (1) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham enrolled 78 consecutive Medicare patients in 2014 compared to 109 patients in the historic group from 2012. They found that patients from 2014 were more likely to have compliance with the bundled care payment requirements. However, there was no difference in all-cause readmission rates at 30 days (15.4% vs.17.4%; p=.711), and 90 days (26.9% vs 33.9%; p=.306).

The bundled care requirements include regular follow-up phone calls, pneumococcal and influenza vaccines, home health care, durable medical equipment, pulmonary rehabilitation, and to attend pulmonary clinic which were significantly increased after implementation of the bundled care requirements. However, these COPD interventions were implemented despite having not been shown to decrease COPD readmissions (2). Furthermore, Shah et al. (3) have reported that only 27.6% of COPD hospital readmissions are for COPD making these COPD interventions even less likely to reduce readmissions.

References

  1. Bhatt SP, Wells JM, Iyer AS, et al. Results of a Medicare Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative for COPD Readmissions. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2016 Dec 22 [Epub ahead of print]. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  2. Robbins RA, Wesselius LJ. Reducing readmissions after a COPD exacerbation: a brief review. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2015;11(1):19-24. [CrossRef]
  3. Shah T, Churpek MM, Coca Perraillon M, Konetzka RT. Understanding why patients with COPD get readmitted: a large national study to delineate the medicare population for the readmissions penalty expansion. Chest. 2015;147(5):1219-26. [CrossRef] [PubMed]

Cite as: Robbins RA. Medicare bundled payment initiative did not reduce COPD readmissions. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2016;14(1):26. doi: https://doi.org/10.13175/swjpcc104-17 PDF