FDA approves Differin Gel 0.1% for over-the-counter use to treat acne - FDA Press Releases

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Differin Gel 0.1% (adapalene), a once-daily topical gel for the over-the-counter (OTC) treatment of acne. Differin Gel 0.1% is approved for use in people 12 years of age and older.

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Focusing on Primary Care for Better Health - CMS Blog

By Andy Slavitt, CMS Acting Administrator (@aslavitt) and
Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, CMS Acting Principal Deputy Administrator and Chief Medical Officer

In the United States, we have historically invested far more in treating sickness than we do in maintaining health. The result of this imbalance is not only poorer health, but more money spent in institutions, hospitals, and nursing homes.

The road to a better health care system means correcting this imbalance. We should reinvest in what we value — primary care — as a practice, as a profession, and as an abundant resource for patients. In recent years, we have begun taking a number of meaningful steps to begin this reinvestment process. Today, we are proposing significant actions to improve how we pay primary care physicians, mental health specialists, geriatricians, and other clinicians. By better valuing primary care and care coordination, we help beneficiaries access the services they need to stay well. In addition to keeping people healthy, health care costs are lower when people have a primary care provider and team of doctors and clinicians overseeing and coordinating their care.

There are four parts to our strategy to emphasize primary care:

1. We are improving how we pay for care that we value. Today, through the Medicare physician fee schedule proposed rule, we are announcing an important set of changes that would improve how Medicare pays for primary care, care coordination, and mental health care. We conservatively estimate that these changes would result in approximately $900 million in additional funding in 2017 to physicians and practitioners providing these services. Over time, if the practitioners qualified to provide these services were to fully provide these services to all eligible beneficiaries, the increase could be as much as $5 billion in additional funding for care coordination and patient-centered care. These changes build on the work we’ve done to improve access to care in Medicaid by finalizing long-anticipatedrules that help support state delivery system reform efforts, and strengthening new policies to align payment with better, more cost-effective care and ensure that access to care is sufficient in key specialties.

2. We are providing more opportunities for primary care providers to practice the way they think is best. Medicare is transitioning to policies that reduce burden on both patients and clinicians by better rewarding coordinated, quality care. We’ve recently launched a new advanced primary care Medical Home model called CPC+, which will be broadly available across the country and will support primary care doctors’ and clinicians’ efforts to spend more time with patients, serve patients’ needs outside of the office visit, and better coordinate care with specialists.

3. We are finding ways to reduce practice expenses associated with operating a primary care or other small practice. We have been convening meetings with physician practices across the country to find ways to reduce reporting and compliance burdens, while at the same time increasing support to their practices. This spring, we proposed to streamline how Medicare pays for quality and value through the new Quality Payment Program, which includes features intended to reduce the reporting burden for clinicians. Through this new program, we’ve moved beyond meaningful use to the new Advancing Care Information category, which supports the vision of providers leveraging health IT to promote efficiency and clinical effectiveness based on their unique needs. In addition, the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative supports more than 140,000 clinicians in sharing, adapting, and further developing their comprehensive quality improvement strategies.

4. We are exploring and encouraging far-reaching innovations to connect people with primary care in new ways. We have included telemedicine in a number of care models. The Rural Health Council is also helping to promote a strategic focus on access, economics, and innovation issues across rural America.

Today’s Proposals for Primary Care Payments in the Physician Fee Schedule

With today’s primary care payment proposals, Medicare continues to move toward a health care system that encourages teams of doctors to work together and collaborate in order to provide more personalized care for their patients.  Doctors will be compensated for spending more time with their patients, serving their patients’ needs outside of the office visit, and better coordinating care. These changes will deliver improved health outcomes that matter to the patient. Some examples of today’s proposals include:

• Increasing payments for routine office visits for treating patients with mobility-related disabilities. Currently, Medicare pays approximately $73 for these visits, even though the patient might need to spend more time with the physician or require more physical and staff support during the visit. Under today’s proposal, Medicare would pay approximately $119 for the visit.

• Increasing payments to geriatricians or family practice physicians – specialists who provide core services for the Medicare program. Under our conservative assumptions, we anticipate that these clinicians could receive a two percent increase in their payments for providing the care we propose to recognize under the Physician Fee Schedule.  Over time, if all of the practitioners that can provide these services provide them to all eligible patients, we estimate that the payment increase could be as much as 30 and 37 percent respectively to these specialties.

• Proposing to pay for care using the behavioral health Collaborative Care Model. The Collaborative Care model supports mental and behavioral health through a team-based, coordinated approach involving a psychiatric consultant, a behavioral health care manager, and the primary care clinician and which extends beyond the scope of an office visit. Payment for care using this model will help address access issues for behavioral health and improve care for patients. This model, increasingly used by primary care practices, has demonstrated benefits in a variety of settings to improve patient outcomes. CMS is also proposing to pay for other approaches to behavioral health integration.

Strengthening Primary Care Beyond Medicare

As more people age into the Medicare program, we know that access to primary care is an essential tool for their health and wellbeing. We know that effective primary care, care coordination and planning, mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, and care for patients with cognitive and functional impairments can improve outcomes and result in smarter spending. Today’s efforts aim to better value primary care to ensure continued – and strengthened – beneficiary access to these valuable services.

We expect to see the impact of this proposal far beyond Medicare beneficiaries and hope that it will help strengthen the fabric of primary care throughout the country.

For more information, please visit: http://ift.tt/29xYkLa.

Filed under: Uncategorized

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FDA approves first HPV test for use with SurePath Preservative Fluid - FDA Press Releases

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the Roche cobas HPV Test as the first test for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) that can be used with cervical cells obtained for a Pap test and collected in SurePath Preservative Fluid.

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Homebound Patient and Caregiver Perceptions of Quality of Care in Home-Based Primary Care: A Qualitative Study - American Geriatric Society

Objectives

To assess patient and caregiver perceptions of what constitutes quality care in home-based primary care (HBPC).

Design

Cross-sectional qualitative design; semistructured interview study.

Setting

Academic home-based primary care program.

Participants

Homebound patients (n = 13) and 10 caregivers (n = 10) receiving HBPC.

Measurements

Semistructured interviews explored experiences with a HBPC program and perceptions of quality care. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Qualitative content analysis was performed to identify major themes.

Results

Five major themes emerged related to participant perceptions of quality care: access, affordability, competency, care coordination, goal attainment. Participants felt that reliable, consistent access provided “peace of mind” and reduced hospital and emergency department use. Insurance coverage of program costs and coordinated care provided by an interdisciplinary team were positively regarded. Interpersonal skills and technical abilities of providers influenced patient perception of provider competency. Assessing and helping patients attain care goals contributed to a perception of quality care.

Conclusion

Patients and caregivers associate high-quality HBPC with around-the-clock access to affordable interdisciplinary providers with strong interpersonal skills and technical competency. These results expand on prior research and are concordant with HBPC goals of around-the-clock access to multidisciplinary teams with the goals of reduced emergency department and hospital use. HBPC programs should be structured to optimize access, affordability, coordinated care, and goal ascertainment and alignment. Quality indicators should be created and validated with these patient and caregiver views of care quality in mind.

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Using Electronic Health Record Data to Measure Care Quality for Individuals with Multiple Chronic Medical Conditions - American Geriatric Society

Objectives

To inform the development of a data-driven measure of quality care for individuals with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) derived from an electronic health record (EHR).

Design

Qualitative study using focus groups, interactive webinars, and a modified Delphi process.

Setting

Research department within an integrated delivery system.

Participants

The webinars and Delphi process included 17 experts in clinical geriatrics and primary care, health policy, quality assessment, health technology, and health system operations. The focus group included 10 individuals aged 70–87 with three to six chronic conditions selected from a random sample of individuals aged 65 and older with three or more chronic medical conditions.

Measurements

Through webinars and the focus group, input was solicited on constructs representing high-quality care for individuals with MCCs. A working list was created of potential measures representing these constructs. Using a modified Delphi process, experts rated the importance of each possible measure and the feasibility of implementing each measure using EHR data.

Results

High-priority constructs reflected processes rather than outcomes of care. High-priority constructs that were potentially feasible to measure included assessing physical function, depression screening, medication reconciliation, annual influenza vaccination, outreach after hospital admission, and documented advance directives. High-priority constructs that were less feasible to measure included goal setting and shared decision-making, identifying drug–drug interactions, assessing social support, timely communication with patients, and other aspects of good customer service. Lower-priority domains included pain assessment, continuity of care, and overuse of screening or laboratory testing.

Conclusion

High-quality MCC care should be measured using meaningful process measures rather than outcomes. Although some care processes are currently extractable from electronic data, capturing others will require adapting and applying technology to encourage holistic, person-centered care.

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Interprofessional Collaboration to Improve Discharge from Skilled Nursing Facility to Home: Preliminary Data on Postdischarge Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits - American Geriatric Society

An interprofessional collaborative practice model was established at Hennepin County Medical Center to improve discharge management from the transitional care unit of the skilled nursing facility (SNF) to home. The practice model involves a geriatrician, nurse practitioner, and pharmacist who care for individuals at a community-based SNF. Before SNF discharge, the pharmacist conducts a chart and in-person medication review and collaborates with the nurse practitioner to determine the discharge medication regimen. The pharmacist's review focuses on assessing the indication, safety, effectiveness, and convenience of medications. The pharmacist provides follow-up in-home or over the telephone 1 week after SNF discharge, focusing on reviewing medications and assessing adherence. Hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits 30 days after SNF discharge of individuals who received care from this model was compared with those of individuals who received usual care from a nurse practitioner and geriatrician. From October 2012 through December 2013, the intervention was delivered to 87 individuals, with 189 individuals serving as the control group. After adjusting for age, sex, race, and payor, those receiving the intervention had a lower risk of ED visits (odds ratio (OR) = 0.46, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.22–0.97), although there was no significant difference in hospitalizations (OR = 0.47, 95% CI = 0.21–1.08). The study suggests that an interprofessional approach involving a pharmacist may be beneficial in reducing ED visits 30 days after SNF discharge.

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Sex Differences in Hip Fracture Surgery: Preoperative Risk Factors for Delirium and Postoperative Outcomes - American Geriatric Society

Objectives

To describe the differences observed in risk factors for delirium and outcomes between men and women undergoing hip fracture repair surgery.

Design

Prospective cohort study.

Setting

Academic medical center.

Participants

Individuals with acute hip fracture admitted to an academic medical center (N = 431).

Measurements

Information on preoperative demographic characteristics, medical history, laboratory results, and postoperative outcomes was obtained according to history and chart review. Delirium was assessed using the Confusion Assessment Method.

Results

The overall incidence of postoperative delirium was 34%, with men more likely to experience postoperative delirium (44.8%) than women (30.2%) (P = .004). Male sex was associated with postoperative delirium in individuals with hip fracture, even after adjusting for other preoperative risk factors. Other significant preoperative risk factors included age, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and American Society of Anesthesiologists classification. Men were also more likely to experience other postoperative complications and have longer hospital length of stay.

Conclusion

Men are at higher risk of postoperative delirium after hip fracture repair than women and have more postoperative surgical complications. Their higher risk of postoperative delirium may be due to their underlying preoperative disease severity.

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