Insights

HMA Insights: Your source for healthcare news, ideas and analysis.

HMA Insights – including our new podcast – puts the vast depth of HMA’s expertise at your fingertips, helping you stay informed about the latest healthcare trends and topics. Below, you can easily search based on your topic of interest to find useful information from our podcast, blogs, webinars, case studies, reports and more.

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Webinar

Webinar Replay: Relationship-Centered Care

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On February 16, 2017, HMA Information Services hosted the webinar, “Relationship-Centered Care: A Healthcare Provider’s Guide to Patient Engagement, Shared Decision Making, and Improved Outcomes.”

Relationship-centered care is more than just a good bedside manner. It’s an entire primary and behavioral care construct designed to foster patient engagement, shared decision making, and a deep collaborative approach between healthcare providers and patients.

During this webinar, HMA experts Margaret Kirkegaard, MD, family physician, and Jeffrey Ring, PhD, health psychologist, provide a deep appreciation of the value of relationships in the provision of medical care, including data that illustrates the efficacy of the relationship-centered approach. The webinar also provides a roadmap for provider organizations striving to enhance relationship-centered care initiatives that involve providers, patients, and the entire medical and administrative staff. Listen to the recording and:

  • Understand the psychology behind relationship-centered care and how it drives collaboration, shared decision making, and a team-based approach – in which the patient is part of the team.
  • Discover how relationship-centered care improves outcomes, reduces costs, and enhances patient and practitioner satisfaction.
  • Learn how relationship-centered care can ensure continuity for patients across the healthcare continuum and foster a more team-based approach among providers.
  • Assess the tools and techniques required to implement and monitor relationship-centered care initiatives among providers, office staff, and care teams.

The slide deck for this webinar can be retrieved by clicking the “DOWNLOAD” button below.

Blog

Washington Releases Apple Health Fully Integrated Managed Care RFP for North Central RSA

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This week, we reviewed the Washington Health Care Authority’s (HCA’s) request for proposals (RFP) for the North Central Regional Service Area (RSA) transition to Fully Integrated Managed Care (FIMC) under the Apple Health Medicaid program. Under the RFP, HCA will contract with fully integrated Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) – integrating physical and behavioral health – for the North Central RSA, which consists of Chelan, Douglas, and Grant counties. HCA previously issued a FIMC RFP for Clark and Skamania counties in the second half of 2015. The state eventually intends to transition all counties to the Apple Health FIMC model. Awarded MCOs will begin serving the North Central RSA on January 1, 2018. There are more than 66,200 Apple Health members in the North Central RSA as of February 2017.

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Webinar

Webinar Replay: Outlook for Medicare

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On February 15, 2017, HMA Information Services hosted the webinar, “An Assessment of Potential Healthcare Policy Changes that Could Impact Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage.”

Throughout his campaign, President Trump indicated he would not make cuts to the Medicare program. But the reality is that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could have a significant impact on several important Medicare benefits. Furthermore, many Republican legislators are considering a number of reforms that could drastically change the Medicare program, including the potential transition of Medicare to a premium support program.

During this webinar, HMA Principal Mary Hsieh and Senior Consultants Aimee Lashbrook and Jason Silva outline some of the key Medicare reforms being considered, which – if any – are likely to make it to the President’s desk, and how healthcare organizations can best navigate the evolving Medicare business and regulatory environment. Listen to the recording and:

  • Understand the ACA’s Medicare-related provisions and what might be included in a partial repeal.
  • Identify priorities of the new administration as it relates to Medicare.
  • Find out what premium support could mean to the Medicare program, and identify what factors will impact the likelihood that Congress will take the controversial step of attempting to transition Medicare to a defined contribution model.
  • Understand the potential opportunities and threats for insurance-based programs like Medicare Advantage and Medigap.
  • Assess the likely future of key Medicare programs such as Medicare Advantage, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).
  • Identify major policy windows and how they could affect timing of any Medicare-related changes.

The slide deck for this webinar can be retrieved by clicking the “DOWNLOAD” button below.

Brief & Report

The Case for Relationship-Centered Care and How to Achieve It

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American healthcare has entered a period of unprecedented debate regarding our healthcare delivery system. Adjectives such as affordable, accountable, integrated, and coordinated care routinely used to describe healthcare, but in the midst of reorganizing healthcare, have we lost the critical element of healthcare?—namely, “care” itself?  This element of true caring within the healthcare debate is often relegated to the realm of patient or consumer satisfaction. The concept of authentic caring in healthcare, as opposed to healthcare as a transaction for acquiring health care services, is best embodied in the paradigm of relationship-centered care. Beach et al developed a conceptual framework for defining relationship-centered care that is founded upon four principles: (1) that relationships in health care ought to include the personhood of the participants, (2) that affect and emotion are important components of these relationships, (3) that all health care relationships occur in the context of reciprocal influence, and (4) that the formation and maintenance of genuine relationships in health care is morally valuable.[1]

While Beach posits that relationship in healthcare deserve attention because they are morally valuable, we sought to examine whether relationship-centered care can actually help achieve the Triple Aim —lower costs, better health outcomes, and better experience of care. We examine the value of relationships in healthcare within four domains:

  • social connectedness or supportive interpersonal relationships outside of healthcare,
  • therapeutic relationships between patients and their healthcare team,
  • relationships within the healthcare team, and
  • relationships between the healthcare team and the community.

Assembling the available research, we developed a framework for primary care practices to assess their ability to foster therapeutic relationships and harness the power of relationships to improve health outcomes.

[1] M.C. Beach, T. Inui, et al, “Relationship-centered Care, A Constructive Reframing,” J Gen Intern Med 21 (2006): S3–8.

Brief & Report

Linking Medicaid and Supportive Housing: Opportunities and On-the-Ground Examples

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Research suggests that a broad range of social factors affect individual and population health. Indeed, acknowledging the role of social factors in determining health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2020 report included as one its four overarching goals for the 2010-2020 decade: “Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all.”1 Housing has been identified as one such social determinant of health, as individuals experiencing homelessness or unstable housing situations face significant challenges in obtaining care and managing chronic conditions, and lack of housing and poor housing conditions can themselves adversely affect health. There is growing evidence that supportive housing can contribute to improved health outcomes for individuals experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.2 Supportive housing can also promote the goal of community integration of individuals with disabilities and elders who need long-term services and supports (LTSS).

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Blog

Mississippi Division of Medicaid Issues RFP to Rebid MississippiCAN Program

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This week, we reviewed the request for proposals (RFP) issued by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) for the reprocurement of Mississippi Coordinated Access Network (MississippiCAN) Medicaid managed care plans. Under the RFP, the DOM is adding 1915(i) Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities Community Support Program (IDD CSP) and Mississippi Youth Programs Around the Clock (MYPAC) services to the MississippiCAN benefit package. As of February 2017, MississippiCAN enrolls roughly 490,000 Medicaid members across all 82 counties in the state, with annual spending of more than $2.7 billion.

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Brief & Report

The Relationship Between Cancer Diagnosis and Patient Productivity, Caregiver Burden, and Personal Financial Hardship

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Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States, and an estimated 1.6 million newly diagnosed patients are expected in 2016. However, recent research indicates that overall cancer death rates in the United States have decreased by 1.5% per year from 2003-2012. There were more than 15.5 million survivors alive at the beginning of 2016; this number is expected to increase to 20.3 million in 2017.3 Research has shown that the impact of cancer extends beyond clinical treatments and can cause financial hardship for patients and their families.4 However, not as much is known about the impact of cancer on productivity and the economic burden on caregivers. The following study aimed to determine the prevalence and sources of financial hardship among cancer survivors and their caregivers.

View poster here: MEPS Analysis of Cancer Survivors

Blog

HIP 2.0 Waiver Renewal Summary

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This week’s review comes to us from HMA Principal Sarah Jagger, of our Indianapolis, Indiana office. Sarah provides an overview of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) and the proposed changes under the HIP 2.0 waiver renewal request, submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for approval on January 31, 2017.

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