Registration for the 2018 Alliance Annual Conference is open, so don't miss this opportunity to connect with CME and CE professionals in Orlando, Florida, January 20-23, 2018.
More than 83 concurrent sessions organized by tracks to help you navigate and select the sessions that best match your needs and interests. Attend expert and peer-led learning on a broad range of topics, including: educational design, patient-centered and interprofessional education and improving patient outcomes. In partnership with the Global Alliance for Medical Education (GAME), the Alliance Annual Conference will include a conference track focused on the needs of the international learner, how they are similar and different from those we face domestically. Learn more and register here: http://www.acehp.org/p/cm/ld/fid=22 If you enjoy Twitter chats, be sure to mark the online pathology journal club #pathJC. Follow @pathJC and read up on the upcoming topics here: https://pathjc.wordpress.com/
The next #pathJC is on Nov 28 at 9 pm ET. The topic is "Whole Slide Imaging Versus Microscopy for Primary Diagnosis in Surgical Pathology" You can read ahead: American Journal of Surgical Pathology New to Twitter? Learn about Twitter Chats. CMS just announced "Meaningful Measures" and "Patients Over Paperwork."
Here are a few excerpts from the statement made by CMS Administrator Seema Verma at the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (LAN) Fall Summit: CMS announced our new initiative “Patients Over Paperwork” to address regulatory burden. This is an effort to go through all of our regulations to reduce burden. Because when burdensome regulations no longer advance the goal of patients first, we must improve or eliminate them. That’s a lot of provider time, money, and resources focused on paperwork instead of patients. We have too many measures. We are measuring process and not outcomes. That’s why we’re revising current quality measures across all programs to ensure that measure sets are streamlined, outcomes-based, and meaningful to doctors and patients. This includes a review of the Hospital Star Rating program. And, we’re announcing today our new comprehensive initiative, "Meaningful Measures.” “Meaningful Measures” takes a new approach to quality measures to reduce the burden of reporting on all providers. It draws on advice and input from the LAN as well as the National Academies of Medicine, the Core Quality Measures Collaborative, and the National Quality Forum. Continued input from the LAN will be critical in this effort. Meaningful Measures will involve only assessing those core issues that are the most vital to providing high-quality care and improving patient outcomes. Patients Over Paperwork, Meaningful Measures, and the new direction for the Innovation Center, are just three of our recent efforts to improve the health care system.
We all probably know someone who has been deeply affected by breast cancer. While breast cancer remains the most common type of cancer diagnosed among women, there are millions of survivors living in the United States. Many of them provide support, hope, and encouragement to newly-diagnosed patients.
In 2017, we also saw several breast cancer drug receive approvals by the FDA: FDA approved abemaciclib (VERZENIO, Eli Lilly and Company) in combination with fulvestrant for women with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer with disease progression following endocrine therapy. September 28, 2017 FDA approved neratinib (NERLYNX, Puma Biotechnology, Inc.) for the extended adjuvant treatment of adult patients with early stage HER2-overexpressed/amplified breast cancer, to follow adjuvant trastuzumab-based therapy. July 17, 2017 FDA granted regular approval to palbociclib (IBRANCE, Pfizer Inc.) for the treatment of hormone receptor (HR) positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer in combination with an aromatase inhibitor as initial endocrine based therapy in postmenopausal women. March 31, 2017 FDA approved ribociclib (KISQALI, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp.), a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor, in combination with an aromatase inhibitor as initial endocrine-based therapy for the treatment of postmenopausal women with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer. March 13, 2017 In May, the FDA approved an immunotherapy (pembrolizumab) for any "unresectable or metastatic, microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) solid tumors that have progressed following prior treatment and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options." FDA granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (KEYTRUDA, Merck & Co.) for adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic, microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) solid tumors that have progressed following prior treatment and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options or with MSI-H or dMMR colorectal cancer that has progressed following treatment with a fluoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan. May 23, 2017 CDC launched Bring Your Brave in 2015 to provide information about breast cancer to women younger than age 45. The Bring Your Brave campaign provides information about breast cancer to women younger than age 45 by sharing real stories about young women whose lives have been affected by breast cancer. Today (Aug 1) is known as #WorldLungCancerDay
Lung cancer continues to be one of the most common cancers worldwide, claiming more lives yearly than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. It is estimated that lung cancer accounts for nearly one in five cancer deaths globally. In 2012, there were 1.8 million newly diagnosed cases of lung cancer alone. Join the conversation about lung cancer: #WorldLungCancerDay I enjoyed reading this recent NEJM Catalyst article titled, "New Physicians Will Need Business School Skills." The author begins with a phrase that I encounter all the time:
“Business of medicine” issues are now forefront in the minds of most physicians. Fundamental business and leadership training must focus on:
The authors of the article propose a very simple concept (easy to implement if your medical school is also linked to a business school): We propose that medical schools, in conjunction with business school faculty, develop an interdisciplinary four-week clinical rotation during the fourth year of medical school. In our view, the best learning experiences would be project-based, combining components of didactic teaching sessions and hands-on experience. The goal of the four-week course would be for the student to identify and solve real problems facing the school’s hospitals and clinics. Why limit these types of project-based learning experiences to 4th-year medical students? This should be incorporated into the worlds of GME and CME. The authors also note the importance of achieving operational efficiencies: Health care is too diverse across geographies and too fragmented in its structure and reimbursement methodology for this to be done exclusively by management consultants or health plan administrators. While I love the idea of an interdisciplinary “business of medicine” elective for 4th year medical students, I also hope that more hospitals and health systems will invest in developing these types of valuable education programs for their practicing clinicians. Over the past several years, the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp) has been holding a conference in the fall that is focused on quality improvement (QI). At one time, it was called the Alliance Quality Symposium (AQS). More recently, it's been called the Quality & Innovation Summit (QIS). Since we live in a world of acronyms, it can get a bit confusing because the "i" in QIS is not for improvement (as in Quality Improvement). It's for innovation.
So, although many may think of QIS as the QI Symposium, it's meant to be much more. QIS will cover innovations in educational design, behavior change strategies, implementation science, evaluation methods, technology and much more. The theme this year is, "Ideas to Impact: Connectivity, Innovation and Patient Care." Don't miss QIS this year in Park City, Utah: Sept 25-27, 2017 Hosted by Intermountain Healthcare. Learn more about QIS and register here: http://www.acehp.org/page/qis-registration We hope to see you at the 2017 Alliance for CEhp Industry Summit (AIS) this May 22-24 in Philadelphia, PA.
Some highlights from the agenda include:
The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) collaborated to develop the Molecular Biomarkers for the Evaluation of Colorectal Cancer guideline. They convened an Expert Panel to develop an evidence-based guideline to help establish standard molecular biomarker testing, guide targeted therapies, and advance personalized care for patients with CRC. A comprehensive literature search that included over 4,000 articles was conducted to gather data to inform this guideline.
Twenty-one guideline statements (eight recommendations, 10 expert consensus opinions and three no recommendations) were established. Evidence supports mutational testing for genes in the EGFR signaling pathway, since they provide clinically actionable information as negative predictors of benefit to anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody therapies for targeted therapy of CRC. Mutations in several of the biomarkers have clear prognostic value. Laboratory approaches to operationalize molecular testing for predictive and prognostic molecular biomarkers involve selection of assays, type of specimens to be tested, timing of ordering of tests and turnaround time for testing results. Read the full guideline here: http://ascopubs.org/doi/pdf/10.1200/JCO.2016.71.9807 Last year at the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Scientific Meeting in Las Vegas, Dr. Gary Lichtenstein from the University of Penneylvania School of Medicine presented research titled, "Cost of Inpatient Care for IBD in the United States." The study showed that the annual bill of hospitalization of pts with IBD is nearly 4 billion dollars. Yes, $4 Billion. Given the magnitude of this burden on the health care system, it's good to know that there are also opportunities to improve care for patients with IBD by combining continuing education into quality improvement (QI) projects.
Program Number: P1178 Day / Time: Monday, Oct 17, 10:30 AM – 4:00 PM Cost of Inpatient Care for IBD in the United States Category: IBD Gary Lichtenstein, MD University of Penneylvania School of Medicine, Merion Station, PA Introduction: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is associated with an increased risk of hospitalization. The actual cost of care for patients with IBD has increased over the years. Few studies have been done to determine the actual hospitalization cost of IBD patients. This study estimates the actual cost and charge for hospitalizing patient with IBD (UC and CD) in the United States. Methods: Using the National Inpatient Sample, all admissions 2004- 2013 with a primary diagnosis of IBD (UC and CD) were evaluated. Data was collected for total cost of care – including aggregate cost of care and the national bill- The aggregate charges for community hospital stays where this was the principal diagnosis, in U.S. dollars. Pt LOS (mean) expressed in days was assessed for pts with IBD from 2004-2013. Results: There were 97,865 hospitalizations of pts with IBD (UC and CD) in 2013 representing 0.3% of all hospital D/Cs The total cost $1,059,589,566 The national bill - $3,851,273,026 for the cost of hospitalization of pts with IBD. These figures are aggregate costs or charges for community hospital stays with IBD as the principal diagnosis, U.S. dollars (2013). In 2004 there were a total of 89,090 hospitalizations of ps with IBD (UC and CD) representing 0.2% of all hospital discharges. This increased from 2004- $ 2,111,357,158 i.e. the charges. This represented the national bill. In 2004 taggregate cost $815,488,982 for community hospital stays where this was the principal diagnosis, in U.S. dollars (2004). Mean costs for hospitalizations in the US are $10,833 with mean charges of $39,373 or a mean of $7,428.86 per day hospitalized in 2013. Mean hospitalizaiton cost and charges increased over 10 yrs from (cost / charges in USD) 2004- $9,153/$23,690 2005- $9,391/$25,355 2006 - $9,176 / $25,981 2007- $9,683 / $28, 299 2008- $10,159 / $32,631 2009- $9,964 / $32,872 , 2010- $10,618 / $34,277, 2011- $10,258 / $35,679 , 2012- $10,547 / $37,049. The mean LOS (days) has decreased 2004- 6.1 2005- 6.0 ; 2006- 5.8 ; 2007- 5.7 ; 2008 – 5.8; 2009- 5.6 ; 2010 5.6- ; 2011- 5.3; 2012- 5.3; 2013- 5.6 Discussion: This study demonstrates that the annual bill of hospitalization of pts with IBD is nearly 4 billion dollars - a figure that has increased over the past decade. This data provides data on actual LOS and cost of hospitalization & charges for hospitalization in pts with IBD. This data will be helpful for future determination of total cost of care for IBD pts Supported by Industry Grant: No Citation: Gary Lichtenstein, MD. COST OF INPATIENT CARE FOR IBD IN THE UNITED STATES. Program No. P1178. ACG 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting Abstracts. Las Vegas, NV: American College of Gastroenterology. |
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