News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Independent Clinical Laboratories in Maryland May Need to Step-up Outreach with Hospitals as New CMS Program Launches Jan. 1

Clinical laboratory leaders will want to pay close attention to a significant development in Maryland. The state’s All-Payer Medicare program—the nation’s only all-payer hospital rate regulation system—is broadening in scope to include outpatient services starting Jan. 1. The expanded program could impact independent medical laboratories, according to the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA), which told Dark Daily that those labs may see hospitals reaching out to them.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the state of Maryland expect to save $1 billion by 2023 in expanding Maryland’s existing All-Payer Model—which focused only on inpatient services since 2014—to also include primary care physicians, skilled nursing facilities, independent clinical laboratories, and more non-hospital settings, according to a CMS statement.

Healthcare Finance notes that it represents “the first time, CMS is holding a state fully at risk for the total cost of care for Medicare beneficiaries.”

Value of Precision Medicine and Coordination of Care to Clinical Labs

“If a patient receives care at a [medical] laboratory outside of a hospital, Maryland hospitals would be looking at ways to coordinate the sharing of that freestanding laboratory information, so that the hospital can coordinate the care of that patient both within and outside the hospital setting,” Erin Cunningham, Communications Manager at MHA, told Dark Daily. Such a coordinating of efforts and sharing of clinical laboratory patient data should help promote precision medicine goals for patients engaged with physicians throughout Maryland’s healthcare networks.

The test of the new program—called the Total Cost of Care (TCOC) Model—also could be an indication that Medicare officials are intent on moving both inpatient and outpatient healthcare providers away from reimbursements based on fees-for-services.

CMS and the state of Maryland said TCOC gives diverse providers incentives to coordinate, center on patients, and save Medicare per capita costs of care each year.

“What they are really doing is tracking how effective we are at managing the quality and the costs of those particular patients that are managed by the physicians and the hospitals together,” Kevin Kelbly, VP and Chief Financial Officer at Carroll Hospital in Westminster, told the Carroll County Times. “They will have set up certain parameters. If we hit those parameters, there could be a shared savings opportunity between the hospitals and the providers,” he added. (Photo copyright: LifeBridge Health.)

The TCOC runs from 2019 through 2023, when it may be extended by officials for an additional five years.

How Does it Work?

The TCOC Model, like the earlier All-Payer Model, will limit Medicare’s costs in Maryland through a per capita, population-based payment, Healthcare Finance explained.

It includes three programs, including the:

  • Maryland Primary Care Program (MDPCP), designed to incentivize physician practices by giving additional per beneficiary, per month CMS payments, and incentives for physicians to reduce the number of patients hospitalize;
  • Care Redesign Program (CRP), which is a way for hospitals to make incentive payments to their partners in care. In essence, rewards may be given to providers that work efficiently with the hospital to improve quality of services; and,
  • Hospital Payment Program, a population-based payment model that reimburses Maryland hospitals annually for hospital services. CMS provides financial incentives to hospitals that succeed in value-based care and reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and readmissions.

CMS and Maryland officials also identified these six high-priority areas for population health improvement:

  • Substance-use disorder;
  • Diabetes;
  • Hypertension;
  • Obesity;
  • Smoking; and
  • Asthma.

“We are going to save about a billion dollars over the next five years, but we are also providing better quality healthcare. So it’s going to affect real people in Maryland, and it helps us keep the whole healthcare system from collapsing, quite frankly,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, told the Carroll County Times.

OneCare in Vermont, Different Approach to One Payer

Maryland is not the only state to try an all-payer model. Vermont’s OneCare is a statewide accountable care organization (ACO) model involving the state’s largest payers: Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont, Healthcare Dive pointed out. The program aims to increase the number of patients under risk-based contracting and, simultaneously, encourage providers to meet population health goals, a Commonwealth Fund report noted.

Both Maryland’s and Vermont’s efforts indicate that payment plans which include value-based incentives are no longer just theory. In some markets, fees-for-service payment models may be gone for good.

Clinical laboratory leaders may want to touch base with their colleagues in Maryland and Vermont to learn how labs in those states are engaging providers and performing under payment programs that, if successful, could replace existing Medicare payment models in other states.

—Donna Marie Pocius

 

Related Information:

Maryland’s Total Cost of Care Model

Maryland All-Payer Model Expands to Include Outpatient Services

Gov. Hogan Sees Maryland Model as Example for U.S. Healthcare

The Maryland Model

Gov. Larry Hogan, Federal Government Sign Maryland Model All-Payer Contract

CMS Expands Maryland’s All-Payer Program to Outpatient Services

Vermont’s Bold Experiment in Community Driven Healthcare Reform

Winners of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE for Medical Laboratory Testing Were Announced in April, Five Years After the Competition Began

More than 312 teams applied for the completion and the prize-winning hand-held device uses clinical laboratory assays to diagnose up to 34 different medical conditions

Star Trek fans among clinical laboratory manager and pathologist will be excited to learn that the winners of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE were announced earlier this year, five years after the contest began. The purpose of the XPRIZE competition was to challenge teams to create a mobile integrated diagnostic device that weighed less than five pounds and had the ability to monitor health metrics and diagnose 13 specific health conditions. The premise for the contest was inspired by the Star Trek medical tricorder that was first conceptualized on the television show “Star Trek” in the 1960s.

In the popular science-fiction show, the tricorder was a multifunctional hand-held device used for sensor scanning, data analysis, and recording data. The name “tricorder” was an abbreviation for the full name of the gadget, “tri-function recorder,” which referred to the three primary functions of the device.

Based in Culver City, Calif, the XPRIZE Foundation is a non-profit organization that creates and oversees prestigious technological competitions for the purpose of prompting innovations that could benefit humanity.

Handheld Device That Can Perform Multiple Clinical Laboratory Assays

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition was launched in January 2012. Participants had until August 2013 to register for the contest. The qualifying round was held the following August. Three hundred and twelve teams entered the competition. Qualifiers had until March 2015 to design and build their prototypes. Consumer testing on the products began in September 2016 and the winners were announced in April 2017.

The top prize of $2.6 million was awarded to Final Frontier Medical Devices, the team led by Basil Harris, MD, an emergency room physician with a PhD in Materials Engineering led the team, along with his network engineer brother, George Harris.

Basil Leaf Technologies, founded by Basil Harris, MD, PhD, FACEP (above center); and his brother George, a Network Engineer (second from left), is a medical technology company headquartered in Paoli, Pa. Their winning entry, called DxtER (pronounced Dexter), is a small FDA-approved group of medical devices that enable consumers to diagnose illnesses at home or remotely and share that data with healthcare providers. (Photo copyright: XPRIZE Foundation.)

The collection of FDA-approved devices that make up the “tricorder” includes sensors designed to gather data about vital signs, body chemistry, and biological functions. The DxtER device walks patients through the self-diagnosis of 34 medical conditions. The instruments include:

·       A compact spirometer that calculates lung strength;

·       A test kit for Mononucleosis;

·       A heart rate monitor;

·       A respiration monitor;

·       The DxtER Orb, a digital stethoscope that also serves as a thermometer; and

·       An artificial intelligence (AI) “engine” that diagnoses medical conditions.

DxtER communicates with a tablet and/or smartphone-based app. Since the components are FDA-approved, diagnostic test results can be taken directly to healthcare professionals.

“You can [receive the] results and take them to the ER or to your physician or whoever’s helping you, and they can build off those results,” George Harris explained in an Engadget article. “They don’t have to start back at square one. They can jump off at that point and move on with their healthcare.”

Basil Leaf Technologies’ DxtER “tricorder” (above) enables the user to self-diagnose up to 34 medical conditions. Each individual component is FDA-approved, so hospital physicians can rely on the accuracy of the test results. (Photo copyright: XPRIZE Foundation.)

According to the contest website, “at the heart of DxtER is an artificially intelligent engine that learned to diagnose by integrating years of experience in clinical emergency medicine with data analysis from actual patients having a variety of medical conditions and outcomes.”

“It is very exciting that our vision of mobile, personalized patient-centric healthcare is getting closer to becoming a reality thanks to the great work of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE teams,” declared Paul E. Jacobs, PhD, Executive Chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM) in an XPRIZE press release. “Creating technology breakthroughs in an industry as complex as healthcare is quite a milestone, and what these teams accomplished is a great stepping stone to making mobile healthcare a viable option across the world.”

DxtER Functions Like a Mobile Medical Laboratory

In addition to the $2.6-million prize, Qualcomm Foundation is giving the Basil Leaf team $3.8 million to further develop the device. This amount includes a:

·       $2.5 million proposal grant to the University of California San Diego; and a

·       $1.6-million gift from the Roddenberry Foundation to adapt the tricorder for hospital use in the developing world.

The XPRIZE competition required contestants to create a tricorder device that could accurately diagnose 13 health conditions. This included 10 core conditions and a choice of three elective health conditions. The devices also needed to be able to acquire five real-time vital signs:

1.     Blood pressure;

2.     Heart rate;

3.     Oxygen saturation;

4.     Respiratory rate; and

5.     Temperature.

The 10 core conditions the devices had to be able to identify were:

1.     Anemia;

2.     Atrial Fibrillation;

3.     Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease;

4.     Diabetes Mellitus;

5.     Leukocytosis;

6.     Pneumonia;

7.     Otitis;

8.     Sleep Apnea;

9.     Urinary Tract Infection; and

10.  Absence of condition.

The contest also required participants to choose three elective conditions from the following list:

·       Cholesterol screen;

·       Food-borne illness;

·       Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screen;

·       Hypertension;

·       Hypothyroidism/Hyperthyroidism;

·       Melanoma;

·       Mononucleosis;

·       Pertussis;

·       Shingles, and

·       Strep throat.

It is notable that the TriCorder XPRIZE—with its $2.6 million prize—generated entries from 312 teams. Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers can take this high number of entrants as a sign that the ongoing advances in technology are poised to support a new generation of very small medical lab testing devices. Thus, miniaturized diagnostic technologies, when combined with more sophisticated computing chips and software are making it simpler and more feasible to pack multiple diagnostic instruments into a hand-held package.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Final Frontier Medical Devices

Family-led Team Takes Top Prize in Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Competition for Consumer Medical Device Inspired by Star Trek

The Contest to Build the First Star Trek Tricorder Has a Winner [Infographic]

XPRIZE Winner Says its Tricorder is Better Than ‘Star Trek’

Underdog Team Wins Millions in Competition to Make Real-Life Tricorder

Star Trek’s “Tricorder” Medical Scanner Just Got Closer to Becoming a Reality

Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Goes to US Team for Device Fusing AI, IoT, Health

Tricorder X Prize – Wikipedia

Star Trek’s Tricorder, Realized? This Device Uses AI to Diagnose Medical Conditions

The Race to Build a Real Star Trek Tricorder

Qualcomm TriCorder XPRIZE Selects 10 Finalists: Next Step Is for Devices to Diagnose Patients using Clinical Laboratory Test Technologies and Similar Diagnostic Tools

Cleveland Clinic and Microsoft Team up to Use Point-of-Care Testing in EMR Network

New care delivery model might emerge from collaboration between two partners

Guess which famous health provider is partnering with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to encourage patients using home self-testing devices to regularly upload those data into an electronic medical record? It’s the Cleveland Clinic Health System. This project may point to a disruptive new model for laboratory testing.

It’s a pioneering arrangement. Microsoft’s HealthVault is interfaced with the eCleveland Clinic MyChart patient portal to create an interactive feature that collects data on from in-home medical devices used by patients with chronic conditions. The pilot project includes 460 patients with diabetes, congestive heart failure and hypertension. These patients use home blood pressure monitors, glucometers, and weight scales which are linked to the HealthVault platform personal health record (PHR) system.
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