A Medicare experiment is facing possible shutdown, despite its proven effectiveness. The secret? It’s nurses making frequent house calls to those with chronic diseases:
“But Health Quality Partners, with its emphasis on continuous nurse-to-patient contact, did work. Of the 15 programs, four improved patient outcomes without increasing costs. Only HQP improved patient outcomes while cutting costs. So Medicare extended it again and again — now it’s the only program still running under the demo. But Medicare has notified Coburn that it intends to end HQP’s funding in June.
“Medicare’s official explanation is carefully bureaucratic. ‘The authority that CMS had to conduct this specific demonstration, which predated the health care law, did not allow us to make the program permanent and limited our ability to expand it further,’ says Emma Sandoe, a spokeswoman for the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Services. ‘As we design new models and demonstrations, we are integrating lessons from this experience into those designs.’”
