Bundle pay plan didn’t save money

07/20/18 • 8 min

Medicare’s bundled pay plan didn’t deliver any cost savings per episode or care outcomes for the top five medical conditions under the program. Also today, deaths in the US from liver disease surged from 1999 to 2016, bivalent HPV vaccine brings no significant increase in any of 38 different potential adverse outcomes, and almost one-quarter of preoperative patients were already using opioids.

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Telemedicine payment expansion?

Federal officials are looking to expand the number of services that qualify for telemedicine payment. Also today, new PET imaging agent shows loss of synaptic density in Alzheimer’s brains, fecal transplantation suggests efficacy in IBS, and SGLT-2 inhibitor shows lower mortality and cardiovascular risk than DPP-4 inhibitor for type 2 diabetes.

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Brain damage, slight benefit seen in epinephrine cardiac arrest

Epinephrine provided a slight 30-day survival benefit, but those patients experienced more severe brain damage. Also today, nerve growth factor inhibitor shows phase-3 efficacy in osteoarthritis, National Academies issues a 5-step plan to address infections linked to opioid use disorder, and there may be beneficial class effects of SGLT2 inhibitors, including dapagliflozin.