Claims and Disease Management Flashcards
Care Mangement Programs and Interventions
- Pre-Authorization
- Concurrent Review
- Case Management: coordinates care of a patient with serious illness
- Demand Management: Passive information intervention
- Disease Management: focuses on chronic conditions with certain characteristcs that make them suitable for clinical intervention
- Specialty Case Management
- Care manager responsible for coordinating patient’s care
- Financial responsibility along with service responsibility
- Population Health Management: Emphasis on wellness, prevention
- Care coordination and other intervention model enhancements: chronic care model, medical home, embedded care manager, transition models, external care manager, palliative care, care coordination demonstrations
- PCMH and P4P
- ACOs
- Non-traditional providers and care settings: Pharmacists as healthcare providers
- Advantages: There are more pharmacists than PCPs, some pharmacies are open 24/7, patients interact with their pharmacist more often.
- Non-traditional providers and care settings: Clinics
- Retail (convenient care) clinics (CCCs)
- Employer worksite clinics
- Urgent care clinics
- FQHCs
- Gaps in care and quality improvement programs
- Telemedicine, telehealth, and automated monitoring
- Bundled payment initiatives
ACO Description
- Structure and organization of ACO’s
- ACO: a network of doctors and hospitals responsible for caring for patients
- To be allowed to share savings with CMS, must report on quality metrics and surpass savings hurdle rate
- A Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACO will manage health care needs (not financially at risk for drug utilization) of 5,000+ Medicare beneficiaries for at least 3 years
- ACOs are not limited to Medicare
- ACO model overlooks some key learnings of DM programs
- Need data analytics, as close to real-time as possible
- Economics. For there to be a net savings, cost must be less than savings
- Plan the number of interactions, with which patients
Ways in which provider group-based ACOs are expected to generate savings
- Care Coordination
- Reducing the need for tests via access to integrated records and consistent management by the physician
- Developing a network of efficient providers
- Focusing on quality, which will result in fewer unnecessary services.
- Reducing duplication of services
- Preventing medical errors
Priniciples for establishing a patient-centered medical home (PCMH)
- Personal physician for each patient
- Physician-directed medical practice
- Whole person orientation
- Care coordinated and integrated across all elements of health care system
- Quality and safety
- Enhanced access through open schedule, expanded hours, and E-visits
- Reimbursement structure to support and encourage this model of care
Types of interventions conducted by pharmacists
- Drug Utilzation Review (DUR) - manage price by subsituting lower-cost alternatives and manage utilization by requiring prior authorization for certain drugs
- Medication Therapy Management (MTM) - aim to improve medication use and reduce adverse events for beneficiaries with mutliple drugs. Required by Part D.
- Pharmacist-delivered care management programs - pharmacists collaborate with PCPs. Focus on drug adherence, which is measured one of two ways
- Medication possession ratio = Number of days supply in the patient’s possession / Number of days during the measurement period the patient could have had the drug
- Portion of days covered (PDC) = Number of days of coverage / Total number of days in the measurement period
Benefits of being designated an FQHC
- Reimbursement for services provided under Medicare and Medicaid
- Medical malpractice coverage
- Eligibility to purchase medications for outpatients at reduced cost
- Access to National Health Service Corps
- Access to the Vaccine for Children Program
- Eligibliity for various other federal grants and programs
Three factors to resolve inconsistency between health improvements and financial savings
- A better understanding of economics of DM programs
- Rigorous measurement of financial outcomes
- Reconciliation between program savings and cost increase trends
Describe the Risk Management Economic Model
- Examine link between DM program risk, cost, and savings.
- Quantify savings at different points in the risk distribution.
- Components:
- Risk stratification
- Prevalence of different chronic diseases
- Chronic disease cost
- Payer risk
- Targeting and risk
- Estimated event cost
- Contract rate
- Engagement rate
- Member re-stratification rates
Designing a DM Program - Metrics that should be explicitly recognized
- Number and risk-intensity of members to be targeted
- Types of interventions to be used
- Number of staff, their cost, and other program costs
- Methodology for contacting and enrolling members
- Rules for integrating program with rest of care system
- Timing and numbers of members to be contacted
- Predicted behavior absent intervention and predicted effectiveness at modifying that behavior
Chronic diseases addressed by disease management programs
- Ischemic heart disease
- Heart failure
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Asthma
- Diabetes
Characteristics of chronic conditions that make them suitable for disease management programs
- Disesase remains the rest of the patient’s life
- Mangeable with pharmaceutical therapy and lifestyle
- Patient can take responsibility for their own condition
- Average cost sufficiently high to warrant expenditure
- Expected cost of non-adherent patient is high
Describe DM ROI Calculations
- In other applications, return expressed on a Net basis.
- In Disease Management express return in gross terms.
- Program cost (denominator)
- Direct costs (salaries of internal staff; vendor fees)
- Indirect costs of internal support
- Management costs
- Overhead and other allocated costs
- Set-up costs: one-time expenses
- Savings due to the program (numerator)
- Savings result from decreased resource utilization
Components of an MTM program for Part D
- Performing or obtaining necessary assessments of the patient’s health status
- Formulating a medication treatment plan
- Selecting, initiating, modifying, or administering medication therapy
- Monitoring and evaluating the patient’s response to therapy
- Performing a comprehensive medication review to identify, resolve, and prevent medication-related problems
- Documenting the care delivered and communicating essential information to the patient’s other primary care providers
- Providing verbal and written education to enhance understanding of medications
- Coordinating MTM services with other health care management services
Possible reasons why DM studies show improved clinical outcomes but not cost savings
- The measurement of financial outcomes is not stable enough, or measurement techniques are not sensitive enough, to detect positive financial outcomes
- Programs are either not focused on financial outcomes or not structured to optimize financial outcomes
- Program sponsors do not understand the economics of DM programs and therefore do not optimize the programs for financial return
- Improvements in quality of care do not always lead to lower costs.
What is Opportunity Analysis
- Demonstrates improvements that could result from applying evidence-based CM programs
- Apply programs to members likely to achieve the Triple Aim (advancing health of populations, improving individual patients experiences, reducing per capita health care costs)
- Several basic components are required:
- Knowledge of member benefit design
- Information on any evidence-based care management programs
- Eligibility and claims data for the prior 2 or 3 years
- While an Opportunity Analysis is retrospective, the results are applied prospectively to identify members meeting the profile of opportunity population