Websites profiling the comparative performance of healthcare providers often fail to deliver information that consumers actually want and can readily assimilate, according to a new report from the New York City-based United Hospital Fund (UHF). The 15-month study looked at 70 publicly available websites, with 32 sites evaluated for the same ten common procedures and… Continue Reading
IPRO Network Addressing Opioid Counseling, Chronic Kidney Disease
The IPRO-led Atlantic Quality Innovation Network (AQIN) Drug Safety Team will implement standardized pharmacist-patient counseling and direct patient- and prescriber-level interventions to decrease the risk of opioid-related adverse events across New York, the District of Columbia and South Carolina. The two-year project will provide pharmacist counseling to patients using a standardized counseling checklist and address… Continue Reading
IPRO Renews NJ Medicaid Quality Improvement Contract
IPRO has obtained a four-year renewal of a contract that provides independent quality improvement services to support New Jersey’s oversight of five managed care plans responsible for delivering healthcare to 1.7 million Medicaid members across the state. Under federal law, states enrolling Medicaid members in managed care plans are required to engage designated External Quality… Continue Reading
IPRO Case Studies
IPRO recently produced case studies on topics including the reduction of sepsis deaths and a new all-payer Provider Network Data System. Case Study: Using Evidence-Based Strategies Saves Lives in NY 50,000 New York residents are diagnosed with severe sepsis or septic shock each year, with 30% of these events resulting in death. Many of these… Continue Reading
CMS Announces Measures Contract Plan
CMS has announced plans to re-compete the umbrella contracting vehicle it uses to fund quality measurement development activities. Under the Measure and Instrument Development and Support (MIDS) contracting vehicle, CMS intends to pre-qualify a group of expert contractor by September 2018, with competitive Task Orders to be issued thereafter. Individual Task Orders will address such… Continue Reading
IPRO First Responders Support Dialysis Patients in Need
Staff from IPRO’s End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Network 6 played a critical role in coordinating essential healthcare services for dialysis patients and family members/care partners evacuated from St. Croix and St. Thomas last month as a result of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The North Carolina-based IPRO team set up camp at Dobbins Air Reserve Base… Continue Reading
Save the Date: IPRO Confirms Annual Meeting Speaker
Health Policy Author and Journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD, will be a featured speaker at IPRO’s 34th Annual Meeting, to be held June 5, 2018. Currently Editor-in-Chief of Kaiser Health News, Dr. Rosenthal was previously a health and science reporter at The New York Times. Dr. Rosenthal is the author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare… Continue Reading
CDC Launches New Sepsis Campaign
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched a new sepsis campaign, “Get Ahead of Sepsis,” aimed at building sepsis awareness by asking healthcare professionals to recognize and detect sepsis in its earliest stages. Patients and families are viewed as central to this campaign, which is focused on preventing infections and being… Continue Reading
Feds Increase Medicare Physician Payment Exemptions
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken steps to reduce the number of physicians in the U.S. who will be affected by the new Medicare payment quality reporting requirements. Previously, CMS has said physician practices that billed Medicare less than $30,000 a year or saw fewer than 100 individual Medicare patients… Continue Reading
ESRD/Tableau Spotlight
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) establishes priorities for the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) Network contractors annually in the Statement of Work section of each Network’s contract with the agency; these priorities support CMS and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) national quality improvement goals and priorities. Tasked with promoting best practices… Continue Reading