Healthcare Financial News

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Aug. 14 that all physician groups participating in the physician group practice (PGP) demonstration improved the quality of care delivered to patients with congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, and diabetes during the second performance year of the demonstration. As a result, the 10 groups earned $16.7 million in incentive payments under the demonstration.

All 10 of the participating physician groups achieved benchmark or target performance on at least 25 out of 27 quality markers for patients with diabetes, coronary artery disease, and congestive heart failure. And five of the physician groups achieved benchmark quality performance on all 27 quality measures.

The groups also improved the quality of care delivered to Medicare beneficiaries on the chronic conditions measured. Physician groups increased their quality scores an average of 9 percentage points across the diabetes measures, 11 percentage points across the heart failure measures, and 5 percentage points across the coronary artery disease measures. Read the press release.

More than one in four Hispanic adults in the United States lack a usual healthcare provider, and a similar proportion report obtaining no healthcare information from medical professionals in the past year, according to a report released Aug. 13 by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). At the same time, the report finds that more than eight in 10 receive health information from alternative sources, such as television and radio. This includes most of those who get no information from physicians or other medical professionals.

The report, based on a nationally representative bilingual survey of 4,013 Hispanic adults, examines Hispanics’ perception of healthcare access and information issues, and also examines Hispanics’ knowledge of diabetes--a serious chronic disease that is more prevalent among Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites. Unlike previous research, this survey examines how different subgroups within the U.S. Hispanic population access health services and information.

Among the survey’s key findings, a significant share of Hispanics with no usual place to go for medical care are high school graduates (50 percent), were born in the United States (30 percent), and have health insurance (45 percent). Access the report.