Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Practices With High-Risk Populations Lagging Behind On Medicare's Annual Wellness Visits
Modern Healthcare: Low-Income Patients Are Less Likely To Get Medicare's Annual Wellness Visit
Medicare's annual wellness visits are less likely to occur at physician practices with low-income, medically complex patients, a new Health Affairs study finds. The CMS introduced the annual wellness visit in 2011 under the Affordable Care Act to promote prevention and wellness among the Medicare population. Yet practices with high-risk populations adopted the practice at a rate of 18% compared with practices with low-risk patients who completed the visits at a rate of 23%. Additionally, practices with many dual-eligible patients, those who qualify under Medicare and Medicaid, billed Medicare for annual wellness visits at a rate of 17% versus practices without such a patient mix, which billed Medicare at a rate of 26.5%. (Castellucci, 2/5)
Modern Healthcare: CMS Cancels Second Model Aimed At Shared Decision-Making
The Trump administration is scrapping an Obama-era initiative that aimed to tap into outside organizations to improve care for select Medicare patients. As part of the Direct Decision Support Model, which was announced in late 2016, the CMS was going to partner with commercial firms that provided health information to the public but were not providers. The agency had received applications from willing partners last year, but the effort had not launched. On Friday, the CMS announced that it was junking the model. (Dickson, 2/5)
In other Medicare news —
Politico Pro: Minnesota Lawmakers Scramble To Prevent Medicare Plan Cancellations
Minnesota lawmakers are trying to head off an obscure policy change that could kick roughly 600,000 seniors off their health plans just before Election Day — setting up a potentially combustible issue in one of the premier 2018 battlegrounds. The bipartisan group is backing a late push to shield enrollees in the Medicare Cost program, a precursor to private Medicare Advantage plans that Congress has tried to wind down for more than a decade. (Cancryn and Demko, 2/6)
Politico Pro: Republicans Say Trump Budget Won't Hit Social Security, Medicare
President Donald Trump in his next budget request is sticking to his campaign promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare, despite the ballooning costs of both programs, according to multiple GOP lawmakers briefed on the document. Mick Mulvaney, White House budget director, hinted to members of the House Budget Committee in a closed-door meeting Monday that they shouldn’t expect reforms in those programs in the fiscal 2019 budget request, according to several lawmakers in attendance. (Forgey and Ferris, 2/6)
