CMS officials focus on health care innovation

Jan 27 2012

At yesterday's 'Summit,' officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advanced the notion that finding new ways to improve quality of care is also the best way to address high health care costs.

Modern Healthcare: CMS' Gilfillan: Time For Innovation Commitment Is Now
A top CMS official urged provider leaders, including hospital executives, to undertake the technology-driven changes in their systems that they hope will improve care and lower costs. "We need to decide now whether to make the commitment to adopt innovation that will fundamentally change the way we operate, change the way we deliver care, change the way we think about these organizations that we run," Dr. Richard Gilfillan, acting director of the CMS' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, said Thursday at a summit on healthcare innovation in Washington (Daly, 1/26).

CQ HealthBeat: CMS Officials Aim To Foster 'Rising Tide of Innovation Mojo'
"Summit" meetings are supposed to be filled with a sense of high purpose and high energy. A gathering Thursday on the critical importance of health system innovation did not disappoint on either count. The meeting built on one of the big themes in health policy in recent years -; the idea that improving the quality of care is, happily, also the best way to address the national crisis of rising health spending (Reichard, 1/26).

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Health Law Is A Family Affair For CMS' Tavenner
Tavenner will likely make some of the same arguments for the law and CMS initiatives when – or if – she encounters a grilling at her yet-to-be scheduled Senate confirmation hearing. … Among the other health law highlights that made Tavenner's list were the funds provided to close Medicare's prescription drug "doughnut hole;" the expanded coverage of preventive services for Medicare beneficiaries; and the creation of state-run, high-risk insurance pools, which she described as "one of the things I'm most proud of" (Torres, 1/26).