Month: January 2016

Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare

Observations on NextGen ACO’s first cohort of participants

Tory Wolff January 22, 2016

Earlier this month, CMS announced the first cohort of Next Generation ACO (“NGACO”) providers (see here our summary of the key changes made in the Next Generation). Below are a few thoughts on who signed up: The Next Generation cohort is diverse The cohort of 21 participants has the flavor of a structured pilot: Heritage mix: 8 are former Pioneer ACOs (with 232K lives attributed in 2014), 8 came out of former MSSP ACOs (217K lives attributed in 2014) and 5 are new to the CMS ACO program but with

Outcomes patients want: Could it be that the more common the condition, the worse doctors understand the outcomes patients seek?

Tory Wolff January 6, 2016

Leif Solberg and team published research last month contrasting how patients value outcomes vs. how physicians think patients value outcomes. The approach was novel: they asked patients! They identified patients with an MRI or CT for abdominal or back pain and asked them (first in an open-ended way to identify 21 outcomes and then more systematically) to rate the importance of outcomes (e.g., find cause of pain, return to normal life functions, avoid surgery, etc.) on a 5 point scale (5=highest). They then asked PCPs to put themselves in the

NEJM Highlights December 2015: providing effective healthcare is hard and expensive – but ineffective care can be even more expensive – and defining what expensive means in healthcare is hard

Marc Herant January 5, 2016

A new focus on the diagnostic reliability of clinicians Two perspectives highlighting the recent report from the National Academy of Medicine (formerly IOM) entitled “Improving Diagnosis in Health Care”. Diagnostic error has long been the invisible side of poor medicine compared to medication errors, or a towel forgotten inside the patient and the like. But the growth of health IT is both exposing diagnostic error and bearing the seeds of a solution, initially through rule-based automated checks and reminders, but likely eventually through a much more guideline driven practice of

Month: January 2016

Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare

Observations on NextGen ACO’s first cohort of participants

Outcomes patients want: Could it be that the more common the condition, the worse doctors understand the outcomes patients seek?

NEJM Highlights December 2015: providing effective healthcare is hard and expensive – but ineffective care can be even more expensive – and defining what expensive means in healthcare is hard

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