Monkeypox a Federal Public Health Emergency

On 08/04/2022, the Biden administration declared a federal public health emergency (PHE) for monkeypox.

During a call with reporters, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said that some 6,600 cases of the virus had already been reported for the week compared to less than 5,000 the week before.

The virus has spread primarily through close contact with someone who is infected. Treatment includes isolation and pain management, often at home. It is rarely fatal.

Designating the outbreak as a PHE allows federal agencies to access emergency funding and allocate funds and other resources to help prevent the spread of the virus. Such declarations also permit the waiver of some laws and requirements to allow healthcare providers to respond to the disease.

On July 23 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency over the outbreak.

CMS Seeks Public Feedback to Improve Medicare Advantage

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Request for Information seeking public comment on the Medicare Advantage program. CMS is asking for input on ways to achieve the agency’s vision so that all parts of Medicare are working towards a future where people with Medicare receive more equitable, high quality, and person-centered care that is affordable and sustainable.

“Medicare Advantage is a critical part of CMS’ vision to advance health equity; expand access to affordable coverage and care; drive high quality, person-centered care; and promote affordability and sustainability of Medicare,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. “Medicare Advantage plans are essential partners in this work.”

“We see a huge opportunity for partnership with as many stakeholders as possible to better understand how care innovations are changing outcomes and costs and how Medicare Advantage is working for enrollees,” said Dr. Meena Seshamani, CMS Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare. “It’s important that CMS engage as many stakeholders as possible to achieve our collective vision of equity, access, quality and affordability.”

The CMS Strategic Pillars prioritize increased engagement with the agency’s partners and the communities we serve throughout the policy development and implementation process. CMS is committed to creating additional opportunities to engage the public and drive innovation in ways that best serve people with Medicare.

In the Medicare Advantage program – also known as Medicare Part C – Medicare contracts with private insurers that must offer all Traditional Medicare services to people with Medicare and may offer added supplemental benefits, such as vision or dental benefits. Most Medicare Advantage Plans also include prescription drug coverage (Part D).

CMS encourages the public to submit comments to the Request for Information. Feedback from plans, providers, beneficiary advocates, states, employers and unions, and other partners to this Request for Information will help inform the Medicare Advantage policy development and implementation process.

The Request for Information can be accessed from the Federal Register at: https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2022-16463/request-for-information-medicare-program

With Choose Home Up In the Air, Providers Consider Preparation Strategies

Home Health Care News | By Andrew Donlan

The home health industry at large is excited about the prospects of the Choose Home Care Act of 2021.

For now, it’s been tabled in Washington, D.C., due to a variety of reasons, including it being an election year. It’s also – to some extent – been cast aside in home providers’ minds, given all the mayhem going on related to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed rule for 2023.

If the Choose Home legislation does come to fruition, it could be a massive tailwind for providers. The catch is that not all providers will benefit.

Instead, the ones that will benefit will be the ones that become designated Choose Home agencies. And in order to become that, they’ll likely need to begin prepping now for a bill that could come through as early next year, or never come to fruition at all.

“If this sounds good to you, what you should be working on now is to prepare yourself so that you can become a designated Choose Home agency,” Deborah Hoyt, senior vice president of public policy for Axxess, said last week at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s (NAHC) Financial Management Conference.

Dallas-based Axxess is technology company that develops cloud-based software solutions for home health, home care and hospice agencies across the country.

Broadly, Choose Home would allow for more skilled nursing facility (SNF) diversion in post-acute care, allowing home health agencies – utilizing an add-on to their existing home health benefit – to care for more higher-acuity patients in the home.

“Though it’s not yet enacted, there’s a lot of things that you can start doing today to help your organization prepare questions that you need to be asking,” Maria Warren, the VP of clinical consulting at McBee Associates, also said at FMC. “In approaching anything, whether it be Choose Home, a hospital-at-home program, diversifying services or implementing new technology, you want to take everything into a strategic assessment.”

That strategic assessment should include five steps, Warren said:

• Establish governance, strategy team and pilot team.
• Outline the current state of the agency, collecting as much data as possible, as well a GAP analysis
• Conduct external assessment – analyzing competitors, the market and other findings. This step should also include considering partnerships as well as other M&A opportunities.
• Act on data: “Look to integrative technologies and AI to better align staff to your patient population needs. Use predictive analytics to identify patient needs and prioritize patient visits.”
• Continuously measure and monitor; the final step is to use data to drive action and accountability internally and externally to get desired results

To prepare or not

The steps to preparing for Choose Home raise another question for every home health agency: ‘Is this worth my time?’. . .

Read Full Article

Understanding How Sound Suppresses Pain

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Studies dating back decades have shown that music and other kinds of sound can help alleviate acute and chronic pain in people. This is true for pain from dental and medical surgery, labor and delivery, and cancer. However, how the brain produces this pain reduction, called analgesia, was less clear.

An international team of scientists set out to use mice to explore the neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain. The team was led by researchers at NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR); the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei; and Anhui Medical University in Hefei, China. Their study was published in Science on July 8, 2022.

The scientists first exposed mice with inflamed paws to three types of sound: a pleasant piece of classical music, an unpleasant rearrangement of the same piece, and white noise. Surprisingly, all three reduced pain sensitivity in the mice when played just slightly louder than background noise (about the level of a whisper). The effect lasted well beyond the sound itself—for at least two days after exposure to the sound three days in a row for 20 minutes. When played louder, the sounds had no effect on the animals’ pain responses.

Pain perception can be affected by emotions and stress. However, the scientists discovered that low-intensity sound didn’t affect the mice in tests of stress and anxiety. The finding shows that this particular type of sound affected the animal’s perception of pain through another mechanism.

Read Full Article