Category

Informaticist

Feb 18 2019
Love0

Special edition for blog subscribers only

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, Consumer, ePatient, Family man, Informaticist, Leader, Musician, Researcher One Comment

Health Hats, The Blog is changing. I’m the same 2-legged white man of privilege, living in a food oasis, who can afford many hats, as I was a couple of months ago. But my advocacy, ministry, channel are changing.  I fell into this podcasting fellowship and here I am a podcaster, too. I’m having a blast. Loving the sound medium. The blog has been a mouthpiece for me. I tested the limits of showing how full of myself I can be. And it allowed me to think out loud.

You are my loyal audience. I write and produce for you. I start with a germ that’s mine. A question, an idea, an initiative I want to think through. Then I go to it with you in mind.  I ask myself, why should you care about whatever? It’s important to me, why do I think it should be important to you? As I write or produce, the germ sprouts, grows into something unexpected, almost all the time.  I’m amazed.

The thing about blogging is that’s almost always one-way. I average 1.3 comments per blog post over 6+ years. I’m getting a bit tired of myself. There’s so much about which I know enough to be dangerous. Podcasting can be a two-way street. Me learning about what interests me. I also recognize that some people like to read, others like to listen, and still others like to watch. So, I’m trying to develop all three media: blog, podcast, YouTube videos.

I’m part of a podcasting fellowship: eight weeks of daily coursework with 300 other budding podcasters from all over the world. We created a supportive community during the course. Now that it’s over, over 100 of us are still engaging, sharing, cheerleading, learning together. A model virtual community (I smell another blog post). I’m a budding sound engineer, producer, and interviewer. I added transcripts for readers and deaf folk. Be still my beating heart. Already, I’ve had an ode to my boy, Mike Funk, met men in caregiving, channeled clowns in the doctors office, explored health equity. I’m working on a series about young adults transitioning from pediatric to adult medicine from the young adult and parent perspective, and conceiving a series about pain management.

But I never asked you if this change to blogging plus podcasting was OK with you, what you think of it, or for your constructive criticism. This is me asking you now.

  • How do you like this transition and change I’m making?
  • Do you listen to the podcast? Read the show notes?
  • Do you still find the blog posts, show notes, written stuff valuable?
  • What do you think about the topics, the guests, the music, the quality of sound, the noise?
  • How about the length? It’s ranged from 20 to 68 minutes.
  • I’m using my cousin’s Joey van Leeuwen’s music. Isn’t he great!?

I was going to send you a survey, but I’d rather just hear from you. I’m eager for observations, atta boys, I’m outta heres, creative ideas, topic ideas, interviewees?

Talk to me, please. Email me at danny@health-hats.com!

And thank you for your loyalty.  Weekly for six years, OMG! We’ve been together a long time in blog years. Onward!

 

Nov 11 2018
Love1

CMS: Use Patient Experts in Measure Development, but Don’t Pay Them?

By Advocate, ePatient, Informaticist, Researcher No Comments

CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid)’s work on Value-Based Measures matters for patients and caregivers because we seek affordable, accessible, equitable, and effective medical care. Or in English: Transparent cost within my means, in a location I can reach, in a fair and unbiased manner, for care that is likely to move me and mine toward best health. We, patient/caregiver experts, need a seat at the tables of governance, design, operations, and learning in the medical industrial complex to advocate for that kind of care.

I sat in one such seat (ten of twenty members represented the patient perspective!) on a CMS TEP (Technical Expert Panel). Here’s a blog post I wrote about it Oct 2017 and here’s the associated final CMS report. As I wrote in that post, Payment for medical services is shifting from paying for volume (more visits, tests, visits, days = more money) to paying for value (quality of care). Makes sense. But what does value and quality of care mean? It means that physicians get paid an incentive (more money) for certain results (outcomes, process, actions). An example is readmission rates. If a physician’s patients are readmitted to a hospital after discharge more than most physicians, they don’t get the extra payment. There are roughly 1,000 of such quality measures. These quality measures are very important to us – people at the center of care (patients, caregivers, parents, direct care clinicians, and staff) – because measurement strongly influences people and organizations who get paid for medical services. Following the money doesn’t necessarily mean better medical care, better health for us, better relationships among our healthcare teams, or better work life for our health professional partners.

The Panel completed its work in July and CMS just published the final report from the Panel. We did good work, our recommendations were heard!

Download [275.25 KB]

 

Important to us, People at the Center of Care, are the following recommendations:

  • CMS should support measure developers, for example, by promoting the development of a toolkit to assist developers with patient and caregiver engagement. Companies and researchers that develop measures have just begun to learn how to engage patients and caregivers in the work of creating and testing quality measures.  They need a roadmap (toolkit). The toolkit should include project planning that includes patient advisors, orientation for patient advisors, guides that researchers can use to recruit patient advisors, communication tools that patient advisors can understand and find.  
  • Patients and caregivers need to be engaged in all aspects of measure development from priority setting to reevaluation. Just like in any aspect of health care, patient and caregiver experts need a seat at the table of governance, design, testing, sharing and learning.
  • Priorities for measures should be based on domains or conditions, not clinical settings or programs. Often measures are hospital-based or office-based. Yet, as patients and caregivers know, care occurs across settings and involves a team of professionals.  The measures should reflect that span of care. For example, rather than developing measures intended for hospitals or eligible providers, CMS would focus instead on a clinical domain such as osteoarthritis. In targeting osteoarthritis holistically, CMS can develop measures that track patients across the continuum of care they receive for that condition—developing measures that assess performance among the primary care providers, radiologists, pathologists, rheumatologists, orthopedic surgeons, and other clinicians that might be involved in the treatment of that condition.

The good news is that CMS has already published Requests for Proposals (RFP) about including patient advisors in the measure development process. The bad news is that these RFPs do not expect patient experts to be paid for their work by measure developers. Currently, CMS expects that participants in Technical Expert Panels work pro bono or be subsidized by their employers. Measure development companies, academia, and national advocacy organizations willingly have their employees volunteer with CMS since they benefit from the networking connection, early intelligence, and addition to their resumes or websites. They are still paid their salary for the work.  On the other hand, patient experts, included in measure development are usually not so employed and are not compensated for their time. This is not reasonable or equitable. Expertise has value and should be compensated. I am not paid for my work with CMS. I don’t care about padding my resume. I don’t need a better network – part of my value is my network. My time and skill are valuable. Oh well, one step at a time. PCORI gets it. We have more work to do with CMS.

Photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash

Related posts

CMS Quality Measures for People

Paying for Value. I’m Overwhelmed. Please Read This

Money Back Guarantee: Value Proposition

 

Oct 28 2018
Love1

Pain Management Choices: One Person’s Point-of-View

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist, Leader, Researcher No Comments

Pain and choices mix, but not too well. A sudden new pain requires professional attention and a pill – I gotta get over this. With severe chronic pain, I pray for some choices that I know might work. I want choices to prevent the pain – a routine. When the pain breaks through I want at least four things I can try. First non-drug that I can do myself (like heat, cold, vibration, meditation), then non-drug help from others, (say, massage, chiropractic), then less side effect drugs (Tylenol, cannabis…).  Finally, pocket therapy – something I’d rather not take, but it’s good to have in my pocket, just in case. So, that’s me in particular circumstances.

Almost everyone with chronic illness experiences chronic pain. Chronic pain in the US costs more than $600 billion annually in health care costs and lost worker productivity. I attended and presented at the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ)-supported Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support (PCCDS) Learning Network annual meeting (phew, a mouthful!) focused on decision-making in pain management and reducing opioid use. My job was to keep it real.

Please find the audio and slide deck here on my YouTube channel. It’s 44 minutes long with the Q&A portion. Here you can find my web resource page with other pain management resources. It’s a work in progress and will grow over time. Feel free to use any or all of it. I operate under Creative Commons. That means: please give me credit (attribution by Danny van Leeuwen/Health Hats). You can stop reading here or read a brief summary of the talk below. Read More

Oct 07 2018
Love3

Putting Patients at the Center of Pain Management Decisions

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist, Researcher, Uncategorized No Comments

Clinical decision support researchers, developers, and implementers this is for you. Clinical decision support (CDS) technology can maximize trust and engagement during decision-making if used to its full potential. Or NOT. Consider the patient and family perspective in making choices about pain management and opioid use CDS.

We know that often, clinical decision-making depends on the relationship between patients, the family caregivers, and the clinicians they interact with. We know that time and life flow greatly impact that relationship. The patient appointment with a clinician often lasts 10-20 minutes – sometimes less, sometimes more. That time is precious. The clinical visit for patients and caregivers represents a drop in the ocean of their health management. Clinical decisions live amid housing, child/parent care, transportation, financial and other life decisions. It’s seldom one decision, but repeated decisions. Think of taking a medication three times a day or following a diet. Only a small proportion of clinical decisions take place during the appointment. Most questions about clinical care or following the agreed upon plan of care occur before and after a medical appointment. CDS technology can maximize trust and engagement to inform decision making, but the effectiveness depends upon the information that is presented and how the CDS is implemented (e.g., when and where it is presented, how it is presented, who it is presented to).

I am a member of CDS Connect, a team of academics, researchers, programmers, clinicians, clinical leaders, informaticists, policymakers, patients, and advocates. Our work is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ). The CDS Connect Repository demonstrates AHRQ’s mission of ensuring evidence-based research is clearly understood and utilized in clinical practice, by codifying and freely sharing evidence-based standards of care as CDS artifacts. In 2018 we are supporting clinical care related to pain management and opioid use.

This article provides insights on the patient and family caregiver perspective in making choices (clinical decisions) about pain management and opioid use in the face of uncertainties. That perspective includes the range of engagement experienced by patients and clinicians, recommendations for artifacts that would help, and some design considerations when researching, developing, or implementing CDS.

Patients and Clinicians Manage Pain Together

While there are 46 words for snow in Iceland, English has far fewer synonyms for physical pain (e.g., suffering, aching, torture, throbbing, discomfort, ache, sore, throb, sting, twinge, shooting, irritation, tenderness). Similarly, CDS that supports pain management should not take a one size fits all approach. Patient and caregiver engagement levels and perspectives vary as much as snow. Effective CDS artifact design and implementation understand this range of patient engagement:

Patient A: “I drive my own train”

I know my personal health and life goals. I’m the CEO of my health team. I trust my team. I want a plan to meet my goals and reduce my pain. I’m not afraid to lack knowledge.  I’ll get it eventually. I’d appreciate answers to my questions when I have them. I can keep track of stuff, but welcome tools to help me do that.

Patient B: “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do”

I’m trying to manage life. I go to the doctor when I have to.  I may or may not get along with the doctor. I don’t think he really likes me. I’ll try to follow instructions if I can [understand, afford, get there, remember]. Really, I prefer video, my reading of English isn’t that good. Maybe my grandson can explain it to me when I get home. I talk about medical problems [at place of worship], [at home], [with family/friends], [never]. In my culture, doctors are the boss.

And everything in-between.

 

And during all this, they are in pain. The severity of pain may impact people’s ability to engage with a clinician during an office, urgent care, or emergency visit. It is very likely to impact their ability to participate in decision-making and sort through all the information relevant to their condition.

Clinical care occurs in the context of a relationship between patient and clinician in an institutional setting (office, urgent care, emergency services). The variation in clinician engagement varies as widely as patient engagement:

 

Provider A: “What’s most important? My relationship with my patients”

I’m available when you need me. Tell me what you need and what you understood. Who is your care partner? Can you afford the care being discussed? I’m comfortable with choices, uncertainty, and risk and can explain it. I know when there’s a disconnect. I want to know and record the outcome of the decision we and others made. These CDS tools help me.

Provider B: “Just get me through the day, I’m so tired”

Here is a print-out with instructions. I’ve only got 7 minutes for this visit. I’ll get dinged if I don’t check the right boxes. What do you mean, you didn’t follow my instructions? Really, who cares? Where do these people come from? What am I supposed to do with this pop-up or instruction? It’s disruptive. I’m spending too much time in the EHR already.

And everything in-between.

 One size does not fit allCDS may be most effective when designed to match the level of patient and clinician engagement. Well-designed CDS that presents relevant information to the right person, when they need it, in a format that is useful and easy to understand, via the right channel (e.g., an EHR, a patient portal or perhaps a mobile app) is a feasible and realizable approach to bridging some of these divides – whether based upon motivation, skill, experience, or culture.

Patients could use your help to manage their pain, in partnership with their clinicians

Imagine CDS delivered via an app or a patient portal that is available 24/7. The “tool” displays a pain management dashboard comprised of the following information:

  • Treatment goals – including physical function, behavior modification, and any associated milestones
  • Plan of care – who’s doing what and when are they doing it (including the patient, their caregivers, clinicians, and ancillary care team members). This includes a calendar view of the plan of care, to more easily track and act upon each entry.
  • An up-to-date list of all care team members (including the lead clinician for pain management and caregivers) with contact information and preferred communication methods and hyperlinks
  • Links to moderated information and social resources tailored to the patient

This dashboard could support both patient perspectives described above – the “take charge” patient who wants as much access to their information as possible and the “tell me what to do” patient (or their caregiver) who might benefit from the information as a reminder of the plan of care. It also supports the patient’s clinicians by placing the patient in a better position to agree upon, track and comply with their plan of care.

Other patient-centric CDS tools may include:

  • A pain tracking app integrated with the EHR
  • Reminders of tests, activities, behavior modification plans, or prescriptions along with their status and any actions needed
  • Mobile health technology used to present CDS, such as Telehealth or mobile apps
  • A display of treatment options, the circumstances that led to those options, and the option chosen

Your Efforts Can Influence CDS Engagement, Acceptance, and Effectiveness

Patients, direct care clinicians, and those that support them need to have a seat at the table from the inception of the CDS – and provide their input during research, design, development, testing, implementation, and evaluation. Simple, intuitive, user-centered design is critical to acceptance and usefulness. Well-designed artifacts are developed with an awareness that frequently, the work of using these tools falls to caregivers and clinical support staff. Effective CDS is designed and implemented to support both patient preferences and clinical workflow. Rich involvement of all people at the center of care allows for consideration of their varied preferences, abilities, life flows and workflows, thus improving the adoption, impact, and usefulness of CDS.

This article seeks to provide insights into the patient and family caregiver point of view while making choices about pain management and opioid use. It accepts that one size does not fit all and considers the range of engagement experienced by patients and clinicians. It provides recommendations for CDS artifact development through actual use. The key is involving the people at the center of care in all phases of CDS development and implementation, including patients, their caregivers, and direct care clinicians. Embracing these strategies helps to ensure that ultimately, CDS will positively impact patient health outcomes.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

Related posts

National Action Plan to Better Manage Pain

Managing Pain – A Reality Check

How many words for pain?

Sep 02 2018
Love2

Managing Pain – A Reality Check

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, Consumer, ePatient, Informaticist, Researcher 3 Comments

Last month I asked for a reality check from my social networks on behalf of the Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support (PCCDS) Learning Network about helping people use information better in managing pain:

Everyone makes decisions about managing pain sometime in their lives. Most people with chronic illness make repeated decisions about managing pain every day. Some people are fortunate to have strong relationships with trusted clinicians and care partners to share the decisions about managing pain. An alarming number of people have found themselves in a downward spiral of addiction to opioids first taken to manage their acute or chronic pain.

Many (more than 25) of you responded. You being People at the Center of Care (people with pain, medical and non-medical professionals advising and treating people with pain, and the people who support patients and professionals day-to-day.) Thank you for your insights. They make a difference. Here’s a summary, lightly edited, of what I heard.

Opioids and Pain

Most respondents couldn’t relate to opioid clinical decision support.  They could relate to pain management. Nobody said they preferred to take opioids. A few said that when their chronic pain was really bad, opioids were the only thing that worked. They were frustrated that they couldn’t get them anymore due to the heavy focus on opioid reduction.

  • When I have a sickle cell crisis, only opioids relieve my pain. I’ve had to remain in excruciating pain because they thought I was drug seeking.

Describing Pain

Describing pain is frustrating and limiting

  • The question frustrated me every time. I asked them to create a standard list to choose from addressing the quality, duration, intensity, location, etc. of the pain. That would have been so helpful. As you have learned to gain awareness to name and to know your pain, your mindful ability to stay with it, rather than run from it, I believe is part of the equation you seek to address. Aversion and fear of our experiences only add another layer of pain.
  • I have to manage my doctors’ abilities to hear about the pain. If I score too high I’m a complainer and they think nothing will work. If too low, then I’m not worth treating.

Pain Goals and Concerns

Managing pain occurs in the context of a life (determinants of health)

  • Discuss my pain goals and concerns with me, including financial & emotional goals and concerns. 
  • Care about my life and what I’m trying to accomplish. I need pain relief to be a parent, a worker, a partner, a contributor.
  • Chronic pain is expensive to manage when most health insurance benefit plans readily cover Rx, but only sometimes cover non-medication therapies. E.g. denial of physical therapy claims for on-going pain management relief. In an ideal scenario, health insurance would cover non-medication-centric pain management services as a matter of course, in parity with Rx coverage for the same condition.
  • Refer patients to integrated behavioral health support to address coping skills in recognition of the chronic pain and depression relationship.

Managing Pain

The bridge between evidence and personal expertise.

  • Managing pain is a continual experiment. Nothing works every time you’re in pain, including medication. You need several proven choices. 
  • I try to keep a journal of how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, and what works as I manage pain. It’s really hard to do when you’re in pain.
  • There are many therapeutic strategies that address the symptoms of physical pain and ways to interrupt the pain cycle and the experience of pain.  I wish I were an expert on the subject.  I know that there are some good answers available to people who struggle with chronic pain.   I believe that people need a combination of coaching and knowledge, as well as hands-on treatment, to benefit from these answers.

Doctors and Managing Pain

  • Doctors only know about drugs.  They can’t admit they don’t know about anything else that might work.
  • Doctors don’t have time for pain management. It can’t be done in occasional 20-minute visits.
  • Most of my questions about pain management occur when doctors aren’t available, like the middle of the night.
  • Technology is not a substitute for time and the relationship with my doctor.
  • I think we need to make the WHO pain ladder (cancer pain) one outcropping of a multimodal pain strategy but start with nonpharm, reorienting the meaning of pain, and subsidize multimodal pain plans before surgery and after injury.  As a pediatrician, pain researcher, inventor, innovator, and former procedural sedationist (I’ve pushed a LOT of fentanyl/propofol/ketamine), I’m much more interested in prevention and lowering the amount of opioids in circulation. 

Other Resources

  • We have an evidenced-based six-week peer-led pain self-management program that is widely used in the US, Canada and elsewhere. People can find locations near them by going to the Evidence-Based Leadership Council and clicking on the program locator on the upper right.
  • As part of The Pain Companion book launch, I’ve been on a number of excellent radio and TV shows recently talking about life with chronic pain and how we might find greater ease and well-being.
  • I recommend getting in touch with the British Pain Society. They are the organization that supports British Pain Clinics.  The Pain Clinics in the UK have embraced some of the complementary and alternative remedies that are quite helpful with pain management.   It is part of their standard protocol and clinic staff work with patients to implement these treatments.  

Suggestions and Questions

  • We should compensate doctors better for pain management discussions.
  • Why don’t we use palliative care specialists when patients have chronic pain? Palliative care is not just for the dying.
  • Pay post-op patients $200 to spend on a Pain Plan approved intervention if they don’t fill an opioid prescription. 
  • Give a list of evidence-based non-pharm options to every pre-op patient, and with every new opioid script.
  • Isn’t there a start-up in compiling non-medication pain management resources by zip code?
  • Why don’t we do more research about non-medication options for relieving pain?

Wow. Responses are still rolling in. Thanks to everyone. I am compiling these into a resource center that will include a pain management section. This is just the beginning of the conversation.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Related posts

National Action Plan to Better Manage Pain

How many words for pain?

Managing Pain

Aug 12 2018
Love2
Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

National Action Plan to Better Manage Pain

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist, Researcher One Comment

Everyone makes decisions about managing pain sometime in their lives. Most people with chronic illness make repeated decisions about managing pain every day. Some people are fortunate to have strong relationships with trusted clinicians or care partners to share the decisions about managing pain. An alarming number of people have found themselves in a downward spiral of addiction to opioids first taken to manage their acute or chronic pain.

Greetings fellow patient/caregiver activists and advocates! I need your help to be successful in some work I’m doing to help people use information better in managing pain. This post takes two minutes to read. A couple of links might take 7 minutes to read. Thinking and responding…. If you can, please take the time. I’m part of this team and I have my own experience with pain management and decision-making. We need a wider reality check. That’s you. Thanks for all you do. Read More

Jul 22 2018
Love1
Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

Patient Ownership of Data?

By Advocate, ePatient, Informaticist 6 Comments

Do you care about health data ownership and want to stay abreast of national initiatives to wrestle with and solve ownership issues? If so, this post is for you.

What does it mean to own my health data? Is it like owning my car or my house? Is it like a copyright? Do I own it by myself or do I share ownership with the people or systems that enter the data (my doctor, the lab, my care partner) or store the data (the electronic health record, the app, the device)? Is it ownership or is it a right, like a civil right? I confess that I know this is important, even critical, but the more I explore, the less I feel like I understand.

Much to my surprise, I was invited to attend a National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Digital Learning Collaborative meeting about Patient Ownership of Data. Participants included stakeholders from EHR vendors, government agencies, hospital and medical practices, insurance companies, patients (I was one of several), and others. See a summary here. The meeting sought to explore several questions (paraphrased by me): Read More

Jun 24 2018
Love1

May I Have Some – Time? Please

By Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist 2 Comments

Best Health depends on relationships -relationship with my health team, my relationship with myself. We can accomplish much in these Best Health Relationships. We take stock, tell stories, complain, report, plan, decide, learn. These relationships impact our spiritual, mental and physical health. Relationships take time. Time as in arriving (scheduling, traveling), being present and accomplishing something (catching up, problem-solving, planning what’s next). Time is key to these Best Health Relationships. Early on in relationships, to establish a connection, a language, a trust, in the relationship, it’s either longer spans of time at each sitting or more frequent sittings.

During my first visit with my neurologist, he said, I know a lot about drugs and therapeutics for Multiple Sclerosis, but I don’t know anything about you, except your brain scan.  My job is to get to know you. Your job is to learn about Multiple Sclerosis. Our visits were often long – 45 minutes, an hour. Soon we developed a short-hand and routine. What’s on your list? This is on mine? Wait, I think we missed one thing on your list. OK. We decided I’m going to do this, you’re going to do that. Text me to let me know how it went. Ten-fifteen minutes tops. A new clinician starts the cycle over.  Build a relationship. Sometimes there’s no chemistry. Then the time (of any length) is mostly wasted, ineffective, especially if I’m in any distress, which is often. Read More

Jun 10 2018
Love3

Give Me My DaM Data::Open Source

By Advocate, Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist One Comment

I’m sensing a harmonic convergence for data control by patients and their trusted licensed clinicians through Open Source. Could a Give Me My DaM Data revolution be upon us?

Give Me My DaM Data (Data About Me) has been a rallying cry of the ePatient Movement (ePatient = Empowered, Engaged, Equipped, Enabled) for quite a while. At the same time, physicians and other licensed clinicians express increased frustration – no, outrage – that the electronic health records support billing, not clinical care. See the National Academy of Medicine’s Care-Centered Clinical Documentation in the Digital Environment: Solutions to Alleviate Burnout.

For me, Give Me my DaM Data means

  1. Data that matters to me
  2. Data that I can understand
  3. Data that’s correct
  4. Data that I control
  5. Data I can use to make decisions with my licensed clinicians

In short: Everyone with permission from me sees the same correct, up-to-date data set.

Today, let’s consider #4 Data that I control

  • I can access it easily
  • I can track who or what is trying to see it, actually sees it, adds to it, changes it (history of use)
  • I can give and withdraw permission to whom I want
  • If there’s money to be made from it, I get some of it

Right now, data about me is controlled by EHR and health app vendors, hospitals, insurance companies, government, and companies with a business model that sells data about me – not me. Read More

Oct 22 2017
Love1

CMS Quality Measures for People

By Advocate, Caregiver, Clinician, ePatient, Informaticist, Leader, Researcher 6 Comments

Payment for medical services is shifting from paying for volume (more visits, tests, visits, days = more money) to paying for value (quality of care). Makes sense. But what does value and quality of care mean? It means that physicians get paid an incentive (more money) for certain results (outcomes, process, actions). An example is readmission rates. If a physician’s patients are readmitted to a hospital after discharge more than most physicians, they don’t get the extra payment. There are roughly 1,000 of such quality measures. These quality measures are very important to us – people at the center of care (patients, caregivers, parents, direct care clinicians and staff) – because measurement strongly influences people and organizations who get paid for medical services. Following the money doesn’t necessarily mean better medical care, better health for us, better relationships among our healthcare teams, or better work life for our health professional partners.

I was nominated to sit on a CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services)/Battelle Quality Measurement Development Technical Advisory Panel (TEP). The TEP had its first meeting in Baltimore last week. I was one of 19 Panel members (and one of two with expertise in all four of the selection criteria -Consumer Perspective, Clinical Content, Performance Measurement, Coding and Informatics).  The TEP seeks to improve the process of developing measures. It isn’t trying to develop measures. The good news is that the TEP gelled as a team and the CMS/Battelle leaders seem open to, if not eager for, actionable advice. I am honored to have been asked to sit at this table.

As a Patient Activist and a change catalyst, I appreciate the formidable forces of inertia and the current business realities of the medical care industrial complex. What can little Danny van Leeuwen hope to accomplish? My goal in accepting this appointment is to find one lever that can move the Value-Based Measurement battleship three degrees toward value to people at the center of care. My superpower is to accept what is and go from there. After listening to my esteemed TEP colleagues, my perception of what is is:

  1. Measures serve to evaluate the performance of individual practitioners (not measure whether patients attain optimal health or how the team is functioning),
  2. Inertia is heading to further measure specificity by specialty and diagnosis (not toward the patient with more non-medical than medical determinants of health who is more than a sum of their diagnoses),
  3. Data for measurement exists primarily in claims, diagnostic systems, and Electronic Medical Records (much less patient-generated data and experience/perceptions of people at the center of care),
  4. Physicians bristle at the idea of being held accountable for anything they deem out of their control (rather than what can I do to contribute to improving whatever?),
  5. People at the center of care, insurers, and policymakers all feel ill at ease with uncertainty,
  6. Few, if any, incentives exist for data vendors to integrate their data (So patients, caregivers, and parents using the most health care dollars provide the bulk of communication at transitions in care, if they can do it at all),
  7. Testing measures in real-life seems to be an almost insurmountable challenge (so the link between measures and what they seek to measure and the link between measurement and value to patients is tenuous),
  8. Direct care clinicians are stressed and burning out – the proportion of time they spent documenting rather than caring is growing while they feel pressure to increase productivity (rather than technology helping to reverse those trends),

Jeesh. Houston, we have a problem. Read More