The CMS has released a proposed Medicare physician fee schedule (PFS) for 2023, which includes proposals to reduce the PFS conversion factor from $34.61 to $33.08, allow marriage and family therapists and licensed professional counselors to provide behavioral care services under general supervision, and allow mobile services to provide opioid use treatment and recovery services. The proposal would also make changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program to allow smaller ACOs more time to shift to downside risk and introduce a health equity adjustment to reward ACOs that deliver high-quality care to underserved groups, among other changes.

Health care providers can realize improved health care outcomes, lower costs, better satisfaction and stronger profits by shifting from traditional fee-for-service to a value-based care model, and these benefits can be achieved by participating in a range of Medicare programs such as Accountable Care Organizations, ACO Realizing Equity, Access and Community Health, the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and Global and Professional Direct Contracting, according to Joel Theisen, CEO and founder of Minnesota-based senior care provider Lifespark. Since participating in a VBC arrangement in Minnesota, Lifespak saw its hospital admissions and emergency room visits drop 43% and 24%, respectively, while admissions to skilled nursing facilities declined by nearly half, and it achieved a customer satisfaction score of 93 out of 100, Theisen said.

Several health systems received clinical care innovation grants worth $200,000 each from Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross to help improve health care quality and delivery. Recipients include Jefferson Health, which plans to use telehealth and web-based advanced care to reduce palliative care barriers among dementia patients living in urban areas, and Penn Medicine, which seeks to reduce barriers to paid buprenorphine access for majority Black, people of color and Indigenous communities in Philadelphia.

A study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers found that hospitals with more home health agencies nearby had higher rates of readmission, most likely due to care interruptions such as staffing changes. At the same time, hospitals tended to have lower 30-day readmission rates when they had a palliative care program or a larger number of local primary care physicians, skilled nursing beds or licensed nursing home beds in the area.

Clinicians shouldn't have to pull strings for patients to get the specialty care they need, and releasing patients back to primary care once their chronic conditions are well-managed would open specialists' schedules, writes internal medicine physician Fred Pelzman, M.D. New e-consult features in electronic medical records may present a useful tool for collaborative management and help primary care clinicians get answers from specialists about medicines, testing and interventions, and would be "essentially creating a multi-specialty practice built up around the patient right there in the electronic medical record," Pelzman writes.

Unsuccessful telemedicine visits were associated with poor clinical outcomes for patients with thoracic cancer, and patients who are Black, are covered by Medicaid or live in areas with high cancer mortality rates are the least likely to complete an audio-visual telemedicine visit, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open. Patients who did not complete a scheduled telemedicine visit had a higher likelihood of visiting an emergency department or urgent care clinic or being hospitalized than patients who completed a visit, while patients with successful telemedicine visits were less likely to die than patients with in-person visits only.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma may be detected up to three years earlier using CT radiomics and machine learning algorithms, when compared with clinician diagnosis, according to a study published in the journal Gastroenterology. "Radiomics-based [machine learning] models can detect PDAC from normal pancreas when it is beyond human interrogation capability at a substantial lead time prior to clinical diagnosis," researchers wrote.

People with heart failure could be at greater risk for death upon losing a close family member, with the highest risk seen in the first week after the family member's death, according to a study published in JACC: Heart Failure. Researchers examined data from 490,527 heart failure patients and used population-based registers to gain information on close family member deaths, noting that these losses were associated with a 29% greater risk of death in the heart failure patients.

Research published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a factor in treatment interruptions for many gynecologic cancer patients, contributing to progression of disease and death in some individuals. The study, which examined data from 227 medical centers in 52 nations, found that 11.2% of patients waiting for gynecologic cancer surgery have encountered delays of more than two months during the pandemic, and 20.7% of those awaiting surgery have had to alter their care plans.

A study posted on a preprint server before being peer-reviewed found that patients who repeatedly got COVID-19 infection have an increased risk of experiencing new, and sometimes long-term, health problems related to their brain, digestive tract, kidney, lungs and heart. The study analyzed data from over 5.6 million patients who were treated within the VA Health System, with those who got more than one COVID-19 infection being twice at risk of dying and were also at a threefold risk for hospitalization within six months of their most recent infection.

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