Jul 11, 2012

IOM Report on Mental Health & Substance Use in Older Adults

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The Institute of Medicine yesterday issued a new report, The Mental Health and Substance Use Workforce for Older Adults.  It provides the results of a study commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services, as directed by Congress, examining the emerging and projected crisis our nation faces as a result of an insufficient geriatric healthcare workforce – specifically the capacity of that workforce to address caregiving needs resulting from behavioral/mental health conditions and substance abuse in the senior population.

It is estimated that one in five older adults in this country have one or more mental health/substance use (MH/SU) conditions.  And these conditions typically exist in individuals that also have other health problems, making diagnoses, treatment and long-term care all the more challenging.  The most common of these conditions include depressive disorders and dementia-related behavioral and psychiatric symptoms.

But substance abuse is a substantial and growing problem as well.  According to a 2009 report from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health – published by the Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) – it has been predicted that by the year 2020, the number of persons needing treatment for a substance abuse disorder will double among persons aged 50 and older.  Unfortunately, that growth is above the linear projection owing simply to aging demographics.

Currently, however, the number of direct caregivers at varying levels of experience and responsibilities reflect the lack of historical investment in Geriatric MH/SU training and education.  As identified in the IOM report based upon their research, future caregivers will need to have expertise in the following areas:
     systematic outreach and diagnosis,
     patient and family education and self-management
       support,
     provider accountability for outcomes and
     close follow-up and monitoring to prevent relapse.

The report was also resoundingly critical of several federal agencies.  The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA), SAMHSA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were all criticized for their failure to use their public policy influence to encourage and direct investments in workforce training in this critically underserved area.

The IOM encouraged Congress (which includes the Republican held House that again today apparently had nothing better to do than vote – what is it now, the 31st time? – to symbolically repeal the Affordable Care Act) to fund the National Health Care Workforce Commission established under that Act.  The report noted that under the Affordable Care Act, the Commission is authorized, “to serve as a national resource that focuses on evaluating and meeting the need for health care workers . . . and to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the older adult population that it serves.”

And finally, the report provided five recommendations that together are designed to focus policy making efforts on the need for leadership, agency coordination and the accelerated development of education and training that reflects the unique needs of a senior population in need of MH/SU services and care.  In addition, the IOM believes such efforts should be directed in thematic alignment with the Affordable Care Act (i.e., being able to evidence the relative value of investments in this area of need).

What will come of this? Well, we know it’s certainly not an ideal environment to be lobbying for new expenditures, even when/if those investments were theoretically already initiated through the Affordable Care Act.  And pragmatically, it seems reasonable to assume that the House is not likely to fund the National Health Care Workforce Commission any time soon.  And we also know that as 32 million new Americans come on line with healthcare coverage (whether through Medicaid expansion or insurance exchanges) the demands of the primary care workforce will grow substantially.

But the senior population in need of MH/SU caregiving have several distinct advantages over the younger generation driving primary care investments: namely, a great deal more wealth, better insurance and a dominant voting bloc.  So while in the short run governmental funding of workforce investments may not be able to meet the projected demand for MH/SU services and care, private investment – whether from nonprofit or for profit organizations – could be richly rewarded.

And as a practical reality, those organizations that provide post-acute and long-term care to seniors are already sharply aware of the need for MH/SU as a core element of their overall approach to achieving better outcomes.  As we continue along the path toward integrated care delivery models, the inclusion of MH/SU will have to be developed and provided as a matter of necessity to achieve relatively better outcomes than competitive providers.  Knowing (accepting) that reality should be sufficient incentive to drive private investment in workforce training and education, irrespective of public policy initiatives.  The challenge will be in figuring out how to do it in a way that achieves the requisite return on investment.

  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse, In the News · Tagged: , , , , ,
Jun 19, 2012

Consumer-Driven Senior Care

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In a recent article published in Beckers Hospital Review:   6 Trends in an Era of Consumer-Driven Healthcare, hospital executives were provided with the strategic implications of current and emerging trends in consumerism.  These same trends will undoubtedly impact organizations that provide senior housing, aging services and post-acute/long-term care.  Understanding, analyzing and developing strategies to address the challenges and benefits from opportunities presented by/offered as the Baby Boomer generation begins to hold sway over the healthcare delivery system will be important for both providers, as well as policymakers.  So I thought it might be useful to try and interpret the key themes presented in that article from the perspective of senior housing and care (SHC) organizations.

Key Trend 1: Transparency
The Affordable Care Act specifically focuses on two areas of transparency: the gathering, assembly, analysis and reporting of clinical and operational data by healthcare providers (e.g., provisions found in the Elder Justice Act ~ Sec. 6703 of the Affordable Care Act); and the assimilation of comparative cost/benefit – i.e., value – information and analysis, particularly relating to provider charges and third-party reimbursement of same (e.g., Health Insurance Exchanges).

With or without the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the message here for SHC providers is quite simple: get used to it.  Nay, if you want to be around in another decade, embrace it.  We are accelerating toward a period of time during which provider culture will be predominantly impacted by data-driven marketing, clinical performance, operational efficiency and financial reality.  And the watchdog enforcing voluntary compliance will not be CMS, state governments or private accreditation: it will be your own stakeholders and constituents.

Key Trend 2: Social Media
People talk – and, of course, people with more time on their hands talk more.  Evidenced by the well-documented social mobilization of the 1960s and 1970s – Boomers know how to communicate.  The intriguing, albeit sometimes almost depressing, realities of electronic social networking offer a challenging conundrum to SHC organizations.  Many, if not most, healthcare providers have embraced that reality in one form or another – whether that’s physicians communicating with patients via e-mail, hospitals using online YouTube videos to promote post-discharge wellness education or organizations like MorseLife in Florida developing an iPhone app (the MorseLife All) that connects seniors in its market to their campus.

Connecting in real time, however, carries with it a variety of challenges and opportunities.  The clinical side of healthcare (the side that can save your life) requires a keen sense of discipline and objectivity – two elements largely vacant in much of social media.  But there seems to be very little standing in the way of information – and misinformation – being haphazardly propagated as proxy for clinical expertise via such media.  Consumers recognize this risk, and that will offer an opportunity for SHC providers to be positioned within social media based upon their credibility, expertise and authority.  Recognizing this has important implications for brand management.

Key Trend 3: Consumer Empowerment
The underlying objective of increased transparency, access to comparative outcome analytics and evidence-based healthcare/medicine is, of course, to help position the healthcare consumer to be in a position to better advocate for their own healthcare. The benefits of such empowerment, however, will necessarily be tempered to the extent the targeted audience is unable to take full advantage. As we know, this is often true of a senior population that may face a variety of obstacles (e.g., mobility outside the home, effects of medication, propensity toward dementia). For good or ill, it will likely fall upon SHC organizations to play a proactive advocacy role for many disenfranchised seniors.

And this will put those providers in a potentially perilous position. Being an advocate usually necessitates having a healthy dose of skepticism. It is difficult, at best, to challenge and defend at the same time. It is sort of like playing a game against yourself: you will always win – and lose. But that is what innovation is all about – finding value-added solutions where none were thought to exist. Those organizations that develop innovative approaches to consumer advocacy for the senior population in ways that add value to all stakeholders will find huge competitive advantages in the future.

Key Trend 4: Consumer Expectations
Much has been written regarding the comparative demands of the Boomer Generation relative to previous generations, but demographically we have really only begun to see this manifested where product and service offerings target the 55 – 65 age cohort (e.g., Active Adult communities, age-defying miracle cures and, of course, Harleys).  But where those Boomer consumers have begun to make their mark the evidence of their purchasing sophistication and discernment is compelling.

Boomers demand value.  And as written in this space before, value in healthcare must be understood as providing better patient experiences and outcomes at an overall lower aggregate cost.  So while value is emerging as the driving force of third-party payer expectations (whether that is from employers, private insurers or Medicare/Medicaid), it will also be the driving force of the empowered consumer.  The message for SHC providers is clear: think value first, often and always.

Key Trend 5: Consumer Outreach
The proliferation of electronic communication media offers some very compelling opportunities for SHC providers to “connect” with their targeted markets.  In doing so, however, it is important to recognize how many other sources are competing for the attention of individuals in those markets.  While I recognized that at a theoretical level, this blog has been a firsthand experience of having to reconcile your individual perceptions on the value of content produced with the actual level of interest generated.

As I have been making the point in presentations on Healthcare Reform, if we get everything else right – increasing access, improving affordability, bending the cost curve, expanding the caregiving labor force – but fail to improve upon the overall health and wellness of our society, we will have failed miserably in creating a healthcare delivery system that is sustainable.  SHC providers are very uniquely positioned to leverage the benefits and advantages that electronic media can offer to help improve the overall health and wellness of the senior population in their communities.  And such efforts will find great synergy with other strategic efforts to develop integrated care and home and community-based delivery models.

I think SHC providers have more to gain than lose by being proactive in embracing Consumer-Driven Healthcare.  What do you think?

  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: Consumer-Driven Healthcare, In the News · Tagged: , , , , ,
Jun 5, 2012

Don’t Let Data Get in the Way of Good Judgment

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There was an interesting article in the April 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review (Good Data Won’t Guarantee Good Decisions, by Shvetank Shah, Andrew Horne, and Jaime Capellá) that I think has relevancy to post-acute/long-term care providers.  Specifically, insights there can be useful in better understanding the significant clinical and operational challenges associated with developing the type of IT infrastructure that will help those organizations demonstrate real value as participants in integrated care delivery models.

About the Article
The authors are part of the leadership team at the Corporate Executive Board and they share some of what was learned through development of a proprietary tool used to assess the ability of employees to, “find and analyze relevant information.”  They call this the, Insight IQ, and through researching 5,000 employees at 22 global companies they stratified those employees into three types:
     Unquestioning Empiricists: Trust analysis over judgment
     Visceral Decision Makers: Go exclusively with their gut
     Informed Skeptics: Balance judgment and analysis

They argue that the Informed Skeptics are, “best equipped to make good decisions,”  but that only 38% of employees – and 50% of senior managers – fell into this group. Their research also uncovered four problem areas that represent obstacles to achieving better ROI on IT expenditures to develop data analysis:
     Analytical skills are concentrated in too few employees
     IT needs to spend more time on the “I” and less on the“T”
     Reliable information exists, but it’s hard to locate
     Business executives don’t manage information as well
        as they manage talent, capital and brand.

Implications for PA/LTC Providers
As I have written in this space previously (and in other publications), PA/LTC providers face a challenging Catch-22 with respect to Information Technology: how to make prudent investments that position them to be competitive in a world of integrated care delivery without subverting scarce resources during a period of tremendous financial pressure.  In making such investments it is critically important to fully understand and anticipate how future IT functionality will enhance clinical and operational capabilities.

To really create demonstrable value as part of an integrated care delivery network it will not be sufficient to collect, assess, analyze and report data collected through an EHR/EMR system.  Those providers seeking to gain a distinct competitive advantage through IT capabilities will also need to demonstrate how their IT infrastructure supports tangible achievements, e.g., greater patient activation, operational efficiencies and improved productivity, higher stakeholder and constituency satisfaction scores and lower rates of hospital readmissions.

As I wrote in my recently published white paper: Strategic Planning and Positioning for Healthcare Reform,
     Data becomes Information when it is organized
     Information becomes Knowledge when it is analyzed, and
     Knowledge becomes Wisdom when it is synthesized.

The stakes are very high for PA/LTC providers entering the new world of integrated care delivery.  IT investment is a foregone certainty of participation – and with that comes the tremendous risk of not achieving the necessary ROI.  As the article points out, “investments in analytics can be useless, even harmful, unless employees can incorporate [those analytics] into complex decision making.”

And there are few industries where the complex decision making of employees carries as much importance (and risk) as in healthcare.  When developing your organization’s IT Strategy, therefore, it is very important to do so in a way that sufficiently recognizes and incorporates operational and clinical understanding.

Policy Implications
There is a lesson here, too, for public policy initiatives seeking to drive wider adoption of Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBH) and Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Direct caregivers – and in particular physicians – are being pressured to make greater use of EBH/EBM.  We see this in the regulatory platform of the Shared Savings Program (i.e., Medicare ACOs).  We see it in how the Insurance Exchanges are being built.  And we see it in how Minimum Essential Benefits have been defined.

I believe most physicians rightly view themselves as Informed Skeptics: balancing available data with their practice experience.  I think where very often a policy disconnect occurs is when physicians try to paint policymakers with the broad brush of being Unquestioning Empiricists: seeking to supplant physician judgment with mandated decision trees.  In response (retaliation) then, policymakers will often argue that physicians’ Visceral Decision-Making is used as a cover for the economic benefits of fee-for-service based medicine.

Of course, reality as usual, lies somewhere in the middle – beyond the interests of political campaigning.  I have always argued against mandated third-party protocols (i.e., those not created and implemented by healthcare providers) because I believe the Visceral Decision Maker brings more to the table than the authors’ research necessarily implies.  I am mindful of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, in which he explains the importance of rapid cognition and intuition – and how these capabilities are based on a lifetime of experience that exists in our subconscious.

But the key takeaway here, from a policy perspective, is the importance of going beyond the “data,” which constitutes the evidence in EBH/EBM, and understanding how data will (can) be used in provider decision-making.  The same caution that applies to organizations of being at risk of data getting in the way of good decision making thus applies equally to the development of effective public policy.

What do you think?

  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: In the News, Information Technology · Tagged: , , ,
May 27, 2012

Is Focus on Hospital Readmissions Misguided?

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In the April 2012 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine there was a Perspective’s article that is being circulated and discussed: Thirty-Day Readmissions – Truth and Consequence (you can download and read the article by clicking on it in my Dropbox™ account to the right).  In the article the authors argue, “that policymakers’ emphasis on 30-day readmissions is misguided.”

They present three reasons:
1. many of the variables inherent in driving readmissions are beyond the hospitals’ control (e.g., “patient-and community-level factors”), and they note that, “it is unclear whether readmissions always reflect poor quality”;
2. improved discharge planning and care coordination could be more effectively achieved by focusing on other metrics, rather than readmissions; and
3. resources committed to reducing readmissions may be better allocated to focus areas able to demonstrate a perceived higher ROI (e.g., patient safety and quality).

I think this misses the point as to why there is a focus on hospital readmissions.  In particular, noting that readmissions may not reflect poor quality seems like a fallacious assertion because I don’t think the argument is being made (at least by those who understand the issues and concerns) that readmissions necessarily do reflect poor quality.  At issue is whether the readmission could have been avoided with more effective care planning and transitioning – and thus equal or better care provided in a lower cost setting.  From listening to nursing staff at PA/LTC facilities, the evidence of opportunities for care transitioning improvement is overwhelming, albeit anecdotal from my frame of reference.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to study the true economic impact of hospital readmissions by attributing their causes.  Some patients should never have been discharged in the first place, and there are a host of reasons that drive premature hospital discharges.  Some patients are discharged to inappropriate settings – often because the patient and/or patient’s family intervenes over the recommendations of physicians and/or discharge planners.  Some patients are convinced they can follow a required post-discharge regimen and fall way short within the first 24 hours.  While some patients need just a little support (e.g., queuing, companionship, medication management), but they are in a situation where they have none.  And finally, some patients – particularly the elderly – are significantly impacted emotionally by care setting transitions, leading to adverse reactions that are very unpredictable.

But research has shown that education, coaching and timely intervention can be very effective in disease management.  We know that getting patients to change risky behaviors and become better self-managers of care can improve outcomes across a range of chronic illnesses.  We know that doctors have neither the training nor the time to engage in counseling on behavior change or to give self-management support. 

So it is inevitable that PA/LTC organizations will need to play a growing and critical role in designing, planning and implementing post-discharge care transitioning programs for patients in need of chronic disease management.  The sooner those organizations embrace the importance of this role and begin to build the requisite knowledgebase to be successful partners in integrated care delivery models, the better chance they will have of surviving in an era of Healthcare Reform.

A good place to begin for many of those organizations may be to become familiar with the work of Dr. Eric Coleman (University of CO Denver School of Medicine) and his colleagues on care transitions.  Many of the PA/LTC organizations that I work with now talk of the, “Coleman Model” and/or the “Coleman way” as an emerging standard bearer.  Here’s their web site:

http://caretransitions.org/

Have a Wonderful Memorial Day – and let’s all be very thankful to the brave men and women that have given so much to ensure we still have the ability to share ideas like I do here, open and freely!

  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: In the News, Transitional Care · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
May 22, 2012

An Ounce of Prevention = How Much?!

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Section 4004 of the Affordable Care Act – Education and Outreach Campaign Regarding Preventative Benefits – requires that the Secretary of HHS, “provide for the planning and implementation of a national public-private partnership for a prevention and health promotion outreach and education campaign to raise awareness of health improvement across the life span.”

As reported by the Hill’s Healthwatch today HHS has signed a $20 million contract with the PR firm, Porter Novelli (http://www.porternovelli.com/) to assist in the development of a multimedia ad campaign to help implement this requirement.  In the grand scheme of governmental spending $20 million unfortunately isn’t going to get too many folks excited – unless you are a Republican Congressman fixated on removing President Obama from office (see article to the right in the BoxNet widget).

But post-acute/long-term care providers should have a strongly vested interest in this topic.  They will be looked upon by stakeholders of every ilk (e.g., hospitals, physicians, patients, patients’ families, policymakers) to fulfill the role of sponsoring and affecting Patient Activation, particularly as it relates to the prevention and management of chronic disease.

Leveraging multimedia – especially with the ability to tap into the vast web of outreach via social networking – to educate and create awareness of disease prevention and management is logical enough.  If $1 invested in such outreach can save a nickel of Medicare/Medicaid spending, I would be hard pressed to argue against it.

The trouble is, the research I have seen evidences a mixed bag when it comes to demonstrating the economic benefit of such  initiatives.  Perhaps that can change with the ever decreasing marginal cost of messaging dissemination via multimedia.  Perhaps not because the other side of that coin is the increasing challenge of competing for attention.  But if it’s not successful, where will the blame lie for its failure?

That’s what I find quite concerning.  How much of this investment is going to be made without direct involvement from the front-line caregiving staff upon whom we are expecting great costs savings through more proactive individual care management? I think this is something that should be looked into as soon as possible to determine what avenues are available to ensure PA/LTC providers have a meaningful seat at the table.

What do you think?

  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: In the News, Wellness & Prevention · Tagged: ,
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