AJMC® in the Press, January 19, 2018

This week, The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®) released its 7th Health Information Technology (IT) special issue, broadening the scope of conversation surrounding health IT by providing insight into empowering patients with their own information and controlling costs. The special issue was welcomed by mHealthIntelligence and EHRIntelligence, with several articles covering studies in the issue.

An article by mHealthIntelligence on mobile health making a connection between providers and minorities highlighted 2 studies. The first study, “Racial/Ethnic Variation in Devices Used to Access Patient Portals,” concluded that mobile device use may represent an opportunity for healthcare organizations to further engage black and Hispanic enrollees in online patient portal use. The second study, “Bridging the Digital Divide: Mobile Access to Personal Health Records Among Patients With Diabetes,” found that 70% of personal health record users accessed it with a mobile device at least once in 2016, with nearly 40% of all log-ins done using a mobile device. Another mHealthIntelligence article on telemedicine consults also mentioned the study “A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Cardiology eConsults for Medicaid Patients,” which found that eConsults are associated with total cost savings for payers due principally to reductions in the cost of cardiac outpatient procedures.

In an article regarding the lack of electronic health record (EHR) use among small, rural, and specialty ambulatory practices, EHRIntelligence focused on the study, “Electronic Health Record ‘Super-Users’ and ‘Under-Users’ in Ambulatory Care Practices.” The study found that as of 2014, 73% of ambulatory practices were not using EHR-based functionalities to their full capacity, and nearly 40% were classified as health IT “under-users.”

Also mentioning AJMC^® this week was the National Pharmaceutical Council. In its Tuesday CER Daily Newsfeed, a contributor article from the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) was included. The article looked back on 2017 highlights of VBID, including the launch and expansion of the VBID model test and the passage of the CHRONIC Care Act to further expand the MA-VBID model test. The Thursday newsfeed also included an AJMC^® interview with VBID Center’s director and AJMC^®’s co-Editor-in-Chief, A. Mark Fendrick, MD. In the interview, Dr Fendrick discussed setting cost-sharing based on value, not price, in cancer care.