Dive Brief:
- CMS acting administrator, Andy Slavitt, addressed the recent 2016 Health Datapalooza meeting in Washington, D.C. and said his top concerns were to eliminate data silos, patients with the least access to care and independent physicians.
- Slavitt said that technology could be doing much more in helping to make better healthcare decisions, focus on the patient, and to improve communications. It needs to be simplified and interoperability is key.
- Slavitt provided proof that technology can work by citing successful goals: signing people up for health insurance in real time, changing the way people shop for insurance, using mobile devices for sign up for coverage, and providing plan comparisons which have reduced prices.
Dive Insight:
Slavitt presented the five strategic steps CMS has been taking to focus on patient-centered care and said, "We committed to taking a page out of the consumer technology playbook and taking a suer-centered approach to design policy."
- Changing incentives to pay physicians and hospitals more for practicing quality and coordinated care
- Creating a single set of "core" quality measures across all payers so it's consistent for physicians
- Advancing interoperability by requiring Open APIs and exposing data blocking practices
- Proposing a replacement for Meaningful Use and streamlining quality measures to put the needs of clinicians and patients first.
In conclusion, Slavitt asked audience members to think about three things to move technology forward: to think bigger about how technology can address healthcare issues, find physicians that are already pushing technology forward and "can define the needs for everyone else" and "it's time to lead, follow or get out of the way."