The Latest Research, Commentary, and News from Health Affairs
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
SPONSORED BY THE PRIMARY CARE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
Primary Care In COVID-19 Relief, Response, Resiliency Webinar Series What does primary care need to strengthen COVID-19 response? How can primary care reboot and reopen? Join the Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC) and special guests in a free, 3-part webinar series to share insights and conversation on primary care’s role in the “new normal” and what primary care needs to sustain essential services going forward and reopen even stronger.
By Arthur L. Kellermann, Craig Goolsby, and Thomas D. Kirsch
If testing is increased in an uncoordinated manner, it will boost counts of infected people but fail to generate the insights we need to tailor our countermeasures and start reopening our economy. Read More >>
When normal politics resumes, we can and should debate the question of whether COVID-19 has exposed flaws in our private coverage system so profound that we need to replace it, or back it up, with a public payment scheme. Meanwhile, let’s make sure that money doesn’t stand in the way of
saving lives. Read More >>
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to delay enforcement of regulatory requirements and to issue guidance for insurers that offer Affordable Care Act plans. In a recent COVID-19 rule, CMS announced it would delay enforcement of parts of the program integrity rule and offer flexibility to states with the Basic Health Program. Read More >>
People who receive treatment for opioid use disorder may participate in self-help programs, receive medication, or both. Analyzing discharge data from opioid treatment programs, Hefei Wen and coauthors find that for most patients, medication is not part of their treatment, and only one out of ten patients combine self-help programs and medication. Read More
>>
Hillary Samples and coauthors examine the effects of longer-duration buprenorphine treatment among Medicaid enrollees. Comparing people who sustained treatment for at least 15 months with those treated for 6–9 months, the authors find that the former have “significantly lower probability of all-cause inpatient use, all-cause emergency use, opioid-related hospital use, all overdose events, and prescription opioid use in the follow-up period than in the treatment period.” Read More >>
It is at the state level where perhaps the most significant breakthrough opportunities for innovation are now emerging and where new initiatives that explicitly embrace improved outcomes, not just processes, stand to exert the most beneficial impact. Health Affairs Blog author Harris Allen outlines a proposal for enacting such an initiative that seeks to accommodate political sensitivities in Georgia.
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Update.
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