Billings Clinic Participates in CMS Telehealth Demonstration Project
The Billings Clinic, Billings, Montana, is participating in a three-year CMS demonstration project, trying to reduce
costs to Medicare. The project seeks to determine whether spending
more money on preventive care and disease management saves money
overall by preventing hospitalizations. The Billings Clinic project is focused on CHF (chronic heart failure) patients. For patients over 65, CHF is the most expensive diagnosis for Medicare.
The telehealth system being used by Billings Clinic is pretty simple:
pressing buttons on his home telephone, pop up on [Jo] Rowland's computer
screen. If Rowland [the lead nurse for Billings Clinic's heart failure disease management program] notices something out of the ordinary, she calls him.
Depending
on what else Martin tells her, Rowland might adjust his medication or
schedule an appointment for him with his physician, Dr. Lynn Otto.
This story resonates with a number of topics that were raised at this week's Healthcare Unbound conference. A critical innovation factor that I mentioned in my presentation at HU, is the availability of proofs to validate marketing claims like improved outcomes or lowered costs. What caught my attention was the low tech way this telehealth application was implemented – basically a phone and IVR application. Payors look at both the general application (here chronic disease management of CHF) and the technology used to provide the telehealth application. So in developing proofs for your solution, be sure to validate both the application and the value of the technology being used. The other thing that jumped out is the high-touch human interaction that the system provides.
“It gives you a sense of knowing somebody cares, knowing somebody's watching out for you,” he said.
Even on Independence Day, a holiday for most people, a nurse called to check up on him.
“It just makes you feel good,” Martin said.
Since joining the project in January, Martin has not been admitted once to the hospital – not bad form someone who's near the top of the nation's heart transplant list for those same seven months.
Pictured right is patient Allen Martin.
VeriChip Inks First Deal with Payor
VeriChip has announced that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the largest health
insurer in the state, has agreed to a two-year pilot program of
VeriChip's VeriMed Patient Identification System in conjunction
with Hackensack University Medical Center and its physicians. In this
new test program, participating patients suffering from chronic
diseases would be provided with the VeriChip implantable microchip, to
provide emergency room staff easy access to those patients' medical
information, as well as to help avoid costly or serious medical errors.
Under this trial, participating Horizon BCBSNJ members with chronic
illnesses will receive VeriChip's FDA-approved, human-implantable Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) microchips inserted just under the skin
of their right tricep. Each patient's unique 16-digit identifier found
within the microchip will then tie into their individual electronic
medical record stored within the VeriMed Patient Registry accessible by
Hackensack University Medical Center's physicians. Each record will
contain vital information related to the patient's condition, family
contacts, lab test data, and pharmacy records helping make the
difference between life and death during an emergency.
“This
two-year collaboration is a milestone for VeriMed and for our
implantable identification technology marking the first time a health
insurer has sponsored such a program,” stated Kevin McLaughlin, Chief
Executive Officer, VeriChip Corporation.
