Looking Back on ISPOR 2024: Hot Policy Topics, Welcome Focus on Employers, and More
May 10th 2024Kimberly Westrich, MA, chief strategy officer of the National Pharmaceutical Council, reflects on the most valuable learnings from the 2024 meeting of ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, including lively discussions of the Inflation Reduction Act and workshops on value assessment.
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Industry Experts Tackle Specialty Drug Access Challenges for Employer Benefit Plans
May 2nd 2024Representatives from ICON plc and Symphony Health joined forces at AXS24 to discuss the challenges of managing high-cost specialty drugs and how they influence self-funded employer benefit plan design and employee access to specialty medications.
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Reducing Low-Value Care Is Hard, but What About Just Not Paying for It?
March 14th 2024After years of efforts to reduce low-value care, panelists at the 2024 Value-Based Insurance Design Summit proposed a new strategy: drawing a line in the sand that payers will not be on the hook for these services.
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Retaining Health Care Workers Starts With Insights on “How We Can Stop Breaking Them”
March 2nd 2024Friday's keynote speaker, Katherine A. Meese, PhD, addressed the conference theme of workforce support at the Association of Cancer Care Centers 50th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit.
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Lowering Cardiometabolic Drug Costs May Improve Diabetes Health Outcomes
February 9th 2024Patients enrolled in a preventive drug list (PDL) benefit saw an 8.4% reduction in acute, preventable diabetes complication days, and PDL members residing in lower-income areas saw a 10.2% decrease compared with control members.
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Drug Prices and OOP Costs Increased Beyond Inflation Rates 2009-2018, But Were Not Related
January 31st 2024Drug prices in the US increased 4.4% annually and median out-of-pocket (OOP) costs increased 9.6% annually from 2009 to 2018, but there was no direct link between these amounts for individual drugs.
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Economics of a Health System’s Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine for Its Employees
A direct-to-consumer telemedicine service resulted in lower per-episode unit costs for care within 7 days and only marginally increased the use of services overall.
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Fostering Primary Care Use May Hold Key to Value and Quality
May 24th 2023At the 2023 Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health, panelists described the ways their organizations are promoting access to primary care in hopes that it can be part of the progress toward achieving the Quadruple Aim of lower costs, better outcomes, patient satisfaction, and clinician experience.
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Fendrick: Embrace of VBID Even More Crucial Amid Equity Conversations, Braidwood Ruling
May 24th 2023Kicking off the 2023 Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health annual conference, Mark Fendrick, MD, of the University of Michigan, delivered a keynote exhorting the audience of employers and payers to implement the principles of value-based insurance design (VBID) in order to improve individual and population health and drive toward equity.
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Building Equity Into Value Assessments Requires Changing the Rules of the Game
April 7th 2023Equity has to be made front and center in conversations about value assessment, otherwise all stakeholders will continue waiting for someone else to make the first move, said one panelist at the Value-Based Insurance Design Summit.
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Mental Health Diagnoses and Services Utilization Vary by Wage Level
Insured lower-wage employees had lower prevalence of mental health conditions but greater severity, with more hospital admissions and emergency department visits than high-wage employees.
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Contributor: Employers Are Turning to Virtual Care Options to Mitigate Costs
February 5th 2023Virtual care not only means saved time and costs for employees, but improvements to employers' bottom lines, through more proactive management of health concerns, notes UCM Digital Health CEO and co-founder Keith Algozzine.
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Michael Thompson Reviews Findings of National Alliance’s Pulse of the Purchaser Fall 2022 Survey
November 16th 2022Michael Thompson, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance), discussed findings of the survey that was presented at the National Alliance 2022 Annual Forum and what concerns employers and business coalitions had regarding the current state of health care cost, delivery, and coverage.
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Neil Goldfarb Discusses Challenges and Future for Business Coalitions Driving Value-Based Care
October 31st 2022Neil Goldfarb, president and CEO of Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health (GPBCH), spoke on the biggest challenges facing GPBCH in advancing health care value, how national organizations are helping drive innovation, and the future role of business coalitions in the health care system.
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Redesigning Benefits, Value-Based Agreements With Better Cancer Care in Mind
October 29th 2022The quest to deliver better cancer care—with better outcomes and patient experience—is not a one-size-fits-all journey, as seen in panels during the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) Payer Exchange Summit, held in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia.
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Neil Goldfarb on Launch, Value-Based Impact of Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health
October 27th 2022Neil Goldfarb, president and CEO of Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health (GPBCH), discussed his initial motivations for launching a business coalition 10 years ago in the Greater Philadelphia region and what accomplishments GPBCH has had so far in driving health care value.
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Contributor: Providers and Employers Need to Collaborate More to Avoid a Greater Crisis
July 12th 2022It can be hard to think about the bigger picture while in the middle of a crisis, but providers and employers should use this opportunity to work together on new and alternative models of care delivery and financing that directly affect cost, outcomes, and experience.
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