January 2019
Discern Health partner Tom Valuck, MD, JD, and Vice President Russ Montgomery, PhD, MHS, published a Viewpoint article in the December 2018 edition of the Journal of Clinical Pathways titled “Quality Measurement as a Tool for a Patient-Centered Approach to Assessing Value.” In the article, they outline how quality measures can be a tool for…
January 2019
Discern is excited to announce the recent addition of these talented staff members to our growing team. Alexis Malfesi, Project Manager. Alexis has a deep understanding of Discern’s work from her time at Lewin Group, where she led the development and ongoing maintenance of clinical quality measures in outpatient hospital settings and worked on alternative…
January 2019
Personalized medicine is a highly promising and rapidly evolving field in which a patient’s individual characteristics—their genetics, medical status, and care preferences—drive which medical therapies are used. In recent years, there have been significant advances in genetic testing and the development of novel therapies targeted to patients with certain genetic profiles. This is especially true…
August 2018
A Discern Health report on clinical decision support (CDS) was cited in a recent report published by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The NAM report, Optimizing Strategies for Clinical Decision Support—Summary of a Meeting Series, summarizes findings from a series of three stakeholder meetings addressing key principles and challenges for implementing CDS tools. The NAM…
August 2018
The year, 2018, is a pivotal year for the implementation of value-based payment (VBP) programs for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) and other post-acute care (PAC) and long-term care (LTC) providers. CMS has directed stakeholders throughout the health care industry to improve patient experience and population health while reducing costs. As the sector that serves many…
August 2018
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a policy statement, titled “Pathways to Success,” on changes to the Medicare Accountable Care Organization (ACO) program. In issuing the new policy statement, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said, “From the moment I became Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, I have been committed…
May 2018
Last month, Theresa Schmidt presented two webinars on topics for the hospice community. The April 11 session on “Hospice Data: How to make it work for, not against, your hospice” was delivered through the Hospice Compliance Network webinar series. This session discussed techniques for using data in performance improvement efforts; exploring problematic patterns to help…
May 2018
Discern VP Sarah Sampsel and Project Manager David Sloan presented at the PQA (Pharmacy Quality Alliance) Conference poster session in Baltimore on May 18. Their poster, “Improving Measure Maintenance Processes: Lessons from the Entresto© Case Study,” outlined the relationship between quality measure stewards and implementation. Using the heart failure medication Entresto© as a case study, the…
May 2018
Recent scientific advances in understanding the impact of HIV treatment have demonstrated that achieving and maintaining viral suppression improves the health of those living with HIV and prevents the transmission of new infections. Further, data modeling shows that achieving viral suppression among people living with HIV is the single most effective strategy for reducing new…
May 2018
Recent Discern projects have focused on patient-reported outcome performance measures (PRO-PMs) and opportunities for their prioritization, development, endorsement, and implementation for various therapeutic areas. PRO-PMs are an important element of measuring progress toward a patient-centered, value-based health care system. A recent example of Discern’s PRO-PM work is supporting the development of a patient-reported measure for…
