A Value-Based Payment Model for Palliative Care: An Analysis of Savings and Return on Investment.

Five percent of the US population accounts for 50% of total health expenditures. This "5%" problem requires moderating Medicare cost trends. SPARK, a community-based palliative care program, focused on its costliest Medicare Advantage patients.

Successful Strategies for Reducing Disparities in Quality of Care: Lessons From Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans.

Identifying strategies to reduce health care disparities is a national priority. This study examines factors within higher performing Medicare Advantage dual-eligible special needs plans (SNPs) that contribute to improved diabetic control. These structural and process elements include nonprofit status, interdisciplinary care teams, medication management, home visiting clinicians, and motivational interviewing.

New arrows in the quiver for targeting care management: high-risk versus high-opportunity case identification.

"Care management" purposefully obscures the distinctions between disease and case management and stresses their common features: action in the present to prevent adverse future outcomes and costs. It includes identifying a high-need population by referrals, screening, or data analysis, assessing those likely to benefit from interventions, intervening, evaluating the intervention, and adjusting interventions when needed. High-risk individuals can be identified using at least 9 techniques, from referrals and questionnaires to retrospective claims analysis and predictive models.

Whole-patient assessment, goal planning, and inflection points: their role in achieving quality end-of-life care.

This article provides a framework for performing whole-patient assessment and goal planning. These clinical tasks involve a multidisciplinary, multidimensional, patient-centered approach to care and a deep appreciation for the complex interplay between the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of the human experience of dying. This article stresses the iterative nature of whole-patient assessment and goal planning, both of which should be conducted at certain important junctures in a patient's progression to manage effectively the evolving challenges faced by terminally ill persons and their families.