Midweek Miscellany

David Ermer–Uncategorized–

Fierce Healthcare brings us up to date on the HLTH Conference held in Las Vegas earlier this week.

Axios reports that New York State’s surprise billing law which relies on payer-provider arbitration raising health care costs. Told you so.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services launched “FindTreatment.gov, a newly designed website that will help connect Americans looking for substance abuse treatment with approximately 13,000 locations across the United States.”

“Visitors can access information on location, treatment options, payment and insurance information, and over 13,000 state-licensed facilities, based on data compiled by SAMHSA

Examples of treatment include:

    Residential treatment – Live-in care, lasting for a month up to one year
    Outpatient treatment – Treatment at a program site while the patient continues to live on their own
    Detoxification – Supervised withdrawal from substance use
    Interim care – When immediate admission to other care isn’t available”

Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a report on prescription drug shortages.

The report identifies three root causes for drug shortages:

  1. Lack of incentives for manufacturers to produce less profitable drugs;
  2. The market does not recognize and reward manufacturers for “mature quality systems” that focus on continuous improvement and early detection of supply chain issues; and
  3. Logistical and regulatory challenges make it difficult for the market to recover from a disruption.

The report also recommends enduring solutions to address drug shortages. These solutions include

  1. Creating a shared understanding of the impact of drug shortages on patients and the contracting practices that may contribute to shortages;
  2. Developing a rating system to incentivize drug manufacturers to invest in quality management maturity for their facilities; and
  3. Promoting sustainable private sector contracts (e.g., with payers, purchasers, and group purchasing organizations) to make sure there is a reliable supply of medically important drugs.  
The New York Times assesses the report here. 
The Centers for Disease Control has developed a webpage on A1c testing for type 2 diabetics and pre-diabetics.  Helpful information.

Fedweek reports that

The FEDVIP vision-dental insurance program “is vulnerable to ineligible family members enrolling in the program with increased costs being charged to federal employees and annuitants,” the inspector general of OPM has reported.

The BENEFEDS portal, through which enrollments for FEDVIP—and the long-term care insurance and flexible spending account programs—are made has “inadequate controls in place to verify dependent eligibility” and further does not have sufficient controls against fraud and abuse, said the report.

Here’s a link to that OPM Inspector General report.