Senior-Focused Primary Care Organizations Increase Access For Medicare Advantage Members, Especially Underserved Groups.

Population-based payment in Medicare Advantage (MA) can foster innovation in care delivery by giving risk-bearing providers flexibility and strong incentives to enhance care and engage patients. This may particularly benefit historically underserved groups for whom payments often exceed costs. In this study, using data from Humana MA plans, we examined "senior-focused" primary care organizations that are supported predominantly by population-based payments in contracts with MA plans.

Reduced Cost Sharing and Medication Management Services for COPD: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: High out-of-pocket costs and improper use of maintenance inhalers contribute to poor outcomes among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). There is limited evidence for how addressing these barriers could improve adherence and affect COPD exacerbations, spending, or racial disparities in these outcomes.

Objective: To examine the effect of a national program to reduce beneficiary cost sharing for COPD maintenance inhalers and provide medication management services that included education on proper technique for inhaler use.

Association Between a Bundled Payment Program for Lower Extremity Joint Replacement and Patient Outcomes Among Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries.

Importance: Much of the evidence for bundled payments has been drawn from models in the traditional Medicare program. Although private insurers are increasingly offering bundled payment programs, it is not known whether they are associated with changes in episode spending and quality.

Objective: To evaluate whether a voluntary bundled payment program offered by a national Medicare Advantage insurer was associated with changes in episode spending or quality of care for beneficiaries receiving lower extremity joint replacement (LEJR) surgery.

Association Between Community-Level Social Risk and Spending Among Medicare Beneficiaries: Implications for Social Risk Adjustment and Health Equity.

Importance: Payers are increasingly using approaches to risk adjustment that incorporate community-level measures of social risk with the goal of better aligning value-based payment models with improvements in health equity.

Objective: To examine the association between community-level social risk and health care spending and explore how incorporating community-level social risk influences risk adjustment for Medicare beneficiaries.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Using data from a Medicare Advantage plan linked with survey data on self-reported social needs, this cross-sectional study estimated health care spending health care spending was estimated as a function of demographics and clinical characteristics, with and without the inclusion of Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a measure of community-level social risk.

Association Between Primary Care Payment Model and Telemedicine Use for Medicare Advantage Enrollees During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This cohort study examines the association between the primary care payment model and telemedicine use for Medicare Advantage enrollees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health-Related Social Needs Among Older Adults Enrolled In Medicare Advantage.

Among older adults enrolled in Medicare Advantage, health-related social needs are highly prevalent, with financial strain, food insecurity, and poor housing quality the most commonly reported. The distribution of health-related social needs is uneven, with significant disparities according to race, socioeconomic status, and sex.

Remote Care Management for Older Adult Populations With Elevated Prevalence of Depression or Anxiety and Comorbid Chronic Medical Illness: A Systematic Review.

Background: Comorbidity of psychiatric and medical illnesses among older adult populations is highly prevalent and associated with adverse outcomes. Care management is a common form of outpatient support for both psychiatric and medical conditions in which assessment, care planning, and care coordination are provided. Although care management is often remote and delivered by telephone, the evidence supporting this model of care is uncertain.

Health Costs And Financing: Challenges And Strategies For A New Administration.

It is likely that 2021 will be a dynamic year for US health care policy. There is pressing need and opportunity for health reform that helps achieve better access, affordability, and equity. In this commentary, which is part of the National Academy of Medicine's Vital Directions for Health and Health Care: Priorities for 2021 initiative, we draw on our collective backgrounds in health financing, delivery, and innovation to offer consensus-based policy recommendations focused on health costs and financing.

The Beneficial Effects Of Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plans For Patients With End-Stage Renal Disease.

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are a vulnerable population with high rates of morbidity, mortality, and acute care use. Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plans (SNPs) are an alternative financing and delivery model designed to improve care and reduce costs for patients with ESRD, but little is known about their impact. We used detailed clinical, demographic, and claims data to identify fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who switched to ESRD SNPs offered by a single health plan (SNP enrollees) and similar beneficiaries who remained enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare plans (fee-for-service controls).

Impact of complex care management on spending and utilization for high-need, high-cost Medicaid patients.

Objectives: Complex care management programs have emerged as a promising model to better care for high-need, high-cost patients. Despite their widespread use, relatively little is known about the impact of these programs in Medicaid populations. This study evaluated the impact of a complex care management program on spending and utilization for high-need, high-cost Medicaid patients.

Identification of Racial Inequities in Access to Specialized Inpatient Heart Failure Care at an Academic Medical Center.

Background: Racial inequities for patients with heart failure (HF) have been widely documented. HF patients who receive cardiology care during a hospital admission have better outcomes. It is unknown whether there are differences in admission to a cardiology or general medicine service by race.

Prioritizing Primary Care Patients for a Communication Intervention Using the "Surprise Question": a Prospective Cohort Study.

Background: Communication about priorities and goals improves the value of care for patients with serious illnesses. Resource constraints necessitate targeting interventions to patients who need them most.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a clinician screening tool to identify patients for a communication intervention.

Applying Machine Learning Algorithms to Segment High-Cost Patient Populations.

Background: Efforts to improve the value of care for high-cost patients may benefit from care management strategies targeted at clinically distinct subgroups of patients.

Objective: To evaluate the performance of three different machine learning algorithms for identifying subgroups of high-cost patients.

Design: We applied three different clustering algorithms-connectivity-based clustering using agglomerative hierarchical clustering, centroid-based clustering with the k-medoids algorithm, and density-based clustering with the OPTICS algorithm-to a clinical and administrative dataset.

Subgroups of High-Cost Medicare Advantage Patients: an Observational Study.

Background: There is a growing focus on improving the quality and value of health care delivery for high-cost patients. Compared to fee-for-service Medicare, less is known about the clinical composition of high-cost Medicare Advantage populations.

Objective: To describe a high-cost Medicare Advantage population and identify clinically and operationally significant subgroups of patients.