Governor Cuomo Announces Workgroup to Draft Legislation for Regulated Adult-Use Marijuana Program

Project TEACH Shines Light on Maternal Depression in NYS

FDA Gives Drugmakers New Ways to Prove Opioid Disorder Treatments Work

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday expanded the outcome measures drugmakers can use to demonstrate the benefits and effectiveness of new medication- assisted treatments of opioid use disorder.

Under the new draft guidance, drug developers can look beyond whether medication-assisted treatments reduce patients' opioid use. They can prove efficacy through drops in mortality, emergency department visits, or transmission of hepatitis C. Other measurable outcomes could include improvements in patients' ability to resume work or school, or by the share of patients with moderate to severe forms of opioid use disorder who go into remission while using the experimental MAT therapies.

The FDA will also create a pathway by which drugmakers can develop measurements of effectiveness where patient-reported experiences on how a MAT therapy cuts down their craving for opioids would also be considered. Read more here.

As Opioid Crisis Rages, Some Trade 'Tough Love' For Empathy

Engaging Behavioral Health Patients Through Digital Tools

To meet the need for behavioral healthcare -and to improve it - some healthcare organizations are turning to patient-engagement apps, others are using fitness trackers to monitor patients' sleep, and others are conducting telemedicine consults from within primary-care physicians' offices. With these tools, they're aiming to increase patient interaction, which can improve outcomes not only for behavioral health but health in general. Read more here.

Last month, Monica Oss took a look at a proposed initiative by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for direct value-based reimbursement of provider organizations, describing it as "another step in moving health care provider reimbursement from volume to value."  The focus of the piece was on consumer-centricity: "The proposed model touts a consumer-centric model, by giving consumers greater control in selecting their primary care practice through beneficiary engagement tools to empower beneficiaries, their families, and their caregivers to take ownership of the beneficiary's health."

There are consumer-centric strategies and models on the drawing board all around the field. Or, as Geisinger Health System's Chief Informatics Officer Alistair Erskine was quoted as saying in a Forbes article last October, "Everyone talks about putting the patient first and that's great, but to make it actually happen we needed to take a big step that would force us to change."

Geisinger's "big step" was to offer refunds on copayments in 2015 as part of its ProvenExperience program. Read more here.

Consider Protections for Specfici Patient Populations in Designs

When America's Rehab Campuses designs a new facility, the organization is often repurposing a former hotel or resort. From a safety perspective, that means that each new facility brings its own challenges. "We walk through and are prepared to adapt everything," says Michelle Carrasco, the organization's chief administrative officer in Tucson, Ariz. That could mean removing a hedge to eliminate hiding places and improve sightlines to patients to removing the materials left behind, like spring mattresses, that could endanger patients if someone removed a spring to use as a weapon. Read more here.