AJMC® in the Press, November 17, 2017

On Monday, The National Pharmaceutical Council’s CER Daily Newsfeed included an interview of Peter Aran, MD, medical director of population health management of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma, from The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®). Aran discussed how to improve quality measure decisions, and said that new approaches for measuring quality need to be developed to get frontline caregivers involved in the early stages of quality measure decisions.

Healthcare Finance News published an article on AHIP’s support of MACRA, APMs, and clinician virtual groups as qualifying for MIPS payments, which also highlighted a study published by AJMC^® in February. The study, “Value-Based Contracting Innovated Medicare Advantage Healthcare Delivery and Improved Survival,” found that value-based agreements were successful in reducing emergency department visits by 11%, reducing inpatient hospital admissions by close to 12%, and increasing lifespan for Medicare Advantage enrollees.

Wednesday’s CER Daily Newsfeed included an AJMC^® interview with Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD, associate professor at Harvard Medical School. In the interview, Choudhry explained that recent results of a team-based, scalable intervention to promote medication adherence highlighted the fact that the relationship between adherence and clinical outcomes is not always clear-cut.

AJMC^® coverage of Maine’s vote to expand Medicaid was included in the HomeCare Magazine’s Editor’s Top 5. The article, “Maine Votes by Ballot Measure to Expand Medicaid, but the Governor Remains Opposed,” reported that after the Maine Legislature passed legislation to expand Medicaid on 5 different occasions, and each time the bill was vetoed by the governor, voters took the issue into their own hands by weighing in on the issue through a ballot measure.