At this month's Health Services Cost Review Commission meeting, commissioners initiated a discussion on a series of potential revisions to a number of the commission's payment policies addressed in a white paper prepared by Commissioners Keane and Colmers. Commissioners also took action on a GBR adjustment for Anne Arundel Medical Center and acted on the final QBR recommendation for FY 2020. Read more in this month's Newsbreak.

The Opioid Operational Command Center (OOCC), in partnership with the Maryland Association of Counties, yesterday held the first Opioid Intervention Team Promising Practices Swap & Share. Stakeholders from Emergency Medical Services, law enforcement, and county health departments across the state met to educate each other about initiatives that have been implemented in their local areas to combat the opioid epidemic in Maryland. The OOCC recognizes hospital services for overdose patients as a promising practice. Doctors from Bon Secours Health System shared their hospital's emergency department protocol for patients that have been identified as having a substance use disorder or who were treated for an opioid overdose. You can view their presentation here. 

MHA has developed Recommendations for Components of Emergency Department Discharge Protocols to help hospitals comply with a requirement in the HOPE Act of 2017 that all Maryland hospitals have a discharge protocol in place for patients treated for an overdose or identified as having a substance use disorder. The document was produced after a series of forums for emergency department and clinical leaders, who developed a consensus on recommended components for a discharge protocol. It includes a summary of the key takeaways from these forums, including recommendations, considerations, and additional resources. The HOPE Act also requires hospitals to submit their approved protocols to MHA beginning in January 2018 and for MHA to report on those protocols in December 2018. MHA will begin to accept protocols now so that you can meet this legislative requirement. We are using a SharePoint site called SUD Resources to receive hospital discharge protocols. Click here to access the site.

Contact: Shamonda Braithwaite

MHA and HSCRC will host a Medicare Performance Adjustment Methodology webinar on Thursday, January 11, at 1:45 p.m. HSCRC Director, Clinical and Financial Information, Chris Peterson, and Health Policy Analyst, Laura Mandel, will review the methodology in detail with opportunities for questions from attendees. The session will be of particular interest to hospital executives responsible for managing total cost of care, including financial leads, population health leads, chief medical officers, and others. To participate in the live presentation at MHA, please RSVP to Tracy Blanchard by Monday, January 8, 2018. To view the presentation remotely, register here.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this week added four quality measures for health care consumers to view on the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility and Long-Term Care Hospital Compare websites. The measures focus on vaccination and infection rates. Both sites will now include the percentage of patients and employees who were given the flu vaccine. The sites will also now display facility-wide data on the amount of patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a common hospital infection, and the Clostridium difficile infection. The Long-Term Care Hospital Compare site also includes the percentage of patients with pressure ulcers, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections and unplanned 30-day readmissions. The Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Compare website will also show the percentage of patients with pressure ulcers, catheter-associated urinary tract infection rates and unplanned readmissions.