The Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care, presented by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA), is a three-day virtual event that brings together more than 3,400 professionals to share research, clinical best practices, and practice-related guidance to advance this specialized field and improve patient care.
Abt staff are sharing their research during the poster sessions on Wednesday, February 17, 12:15 - 1:15 p.m. CT and Thursday, February 18, 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. CT.
Rates of Diagnoses Indicating Opioid Dependence after Hospice Live Discharge: A National Study
T.J. Christian, Ian Breunig, Abt Global, Joan Teno, Oregon Health & Science University, Pedro Gozalo, Brown University, and Michael Plotzke, Abt Global
Impacts of COVID-19 on the Utilization of the Medicare Hospice Benefit
Michael Plotzke, T.J. Christian, and Betty Fout, Abt Global
Insights and Impact
Improving Patient Choice: Meaningful Measures of Home Health and Hospice Care Quality
To help patients and their families find high quality home health and hospice care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires support for developing and maintaining patient assessment tools and quality measures for its Home Health and…
Managing Opioid Use and Misuse in Older Adults
Older adults are twice as likely as the general population to have pain, and clinicians often rely on opioid treatment. As a result, opioid use, misuse, and opioid use disorder have increased among older adults, who are vulnerable to adverse reactions…
Evaluation of MCCM Suggests Promise for Medicare Beneficiaries with Terminal Illness and Cost Savings for Medicare
Typically, terminally ill Medicare beneficiaries must choose between enrolling in hospice or continuing to receive curative treatment. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM) gives beneficiaries the choice…
Analyzing If An Oncology Care Model Will Improve Care and Lower Costs
Cancer strikes 1.6 million Americans each year. It imposes huge costs: heartache, death, and an estimated $263.8 billion in medical care and lost productivity in 2010, the most recent data available. Cancer care is complex and improving it faces a legal…
How to Evaluate the Quality and Cost of Cancer Care? Teamwork
Physically, emotionally, and financially, cancer is tough on patients and their families. Half of newly diagnosed cancer patients are over age 65, making Medicare the single largest payer of oncology care in the United States. Through its oncology care model (OCM), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Center for Innovation (CMMI) is looking for ways to reduce the financial costs to Medicare while reducing burdens for beneficiaries and their families by enhancing:Patient navigation and education,Care coordination among providers,Adherence to nationally recognized clinical guidelines, andEnd of life care.Abt is in our fourth year leading an evaluation of OCM. We’re trying to determine if the model reduces costs to Medicare, and improves the cancer patient’s experience.To properly evaluate OCM, we use a variety of data to assess a broad range of outcomes: patient care experiences, clinician perceptions, utilization and cost of health services, and clinical outcomes. Abt has the expertise to cover several of these areas, but it takes integrated, comprehensive partnerships for an evaluation of this scope, which must address such diverse program outcomes while keeping all of the pieces moving. That’s why we assembled a team of partners with the big data, economic, and clinical expertise to evaluate this complex program.Our PartnersTo start, we needed data, and lots of it. GDIT manages CMMI’s big data warehouse, which is used for program implementation and evaluations. GDIT’s experience and deep understanding of Medicare administrative data, gives them the insight to extract and assemble the necessary data from claims, Medicare beneficiary eligibility files, provider service files, and other related sources. They create beneficiary-, episode-, and provider-level files every quarter, which our team uses for evaluation analyses.Of course, one of the vital metrics for determining the success of OCM is whether it changes utilization patterns and reduces Medicare costs. The Lewin Group is leading the cost and use analysis. They’re answering questions such as “Did the use of services change under OCM?” “Did Medicare save money?” “Where in the process did savings (or losses) occur?”To understand the clinical impacts of OCM, we invited Dr. Nancy Keating and her colleagues from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Policy to join our team, along with Dr. Gabriel Brooks, a medical oncologist from Dartmouth. They’re determining if clinicians are adhering to national clinical guidelines, whether treatment patterns are changing to emphasize high-value care, and whether there are any deleterious consequences.In addition to managing this team, Abt is surveying cancer patients and family members about their care experiences, surveying clinicians about their perspectives and experiences, and conducting dozens of in-depth case studies to understand how care delivery is changing. We’re also using our expertise in hospice and palliative care to measure improvements in care at the end of life.Changing cancer care delivery to foster coordination and efficiency takes time, and the data thus far reflect the earliest years of OCM. Our team is still analyzing data and measuring OCM’s impact. We look forward to sharing a full report—the fruit of our collective labors—reflecting the first two years of OCM later this year.
Patient-Centered Care: It’s Not Just a Buzzword
The AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting inspired this blog on the benefits of Abt’s approach to including patient perspectives in health care delivery.
Caring for Nursing Home Residents with Dementia
Studies indicate that dementia care in the United States is, generally, impersonal and fragmented. Massachusetts requires long-term care facilities to provide dementia care training to direct-care workers. The intention of the regulation was to address…
Supporting and Refining the Five-Star Quality Rating System for Nursing Homes
When individuals need long-term care, information on provider quality is critical to making an informed choice. The major ongoing challenge in the project is preparing the monthly updates to Care Compare and its Five-Star Quality Rating System to support…
Monitoring Medicare’s Home Health, Hospice, and Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Benefits
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) home health, hospice, home infusion therapy, home IVIG, and IRF benefits require constant monitoring of payment policy—and revisions, as needed—to ensure they are working as intended. This enables…