Studies Conducted at University of Minnesota on Medicare and Medicaid Recently Reported (Potential Implications of Recent and Proposed Changes in the…

Studies Conducted at University of Minnesota on Medicare and Medicaid Recently Reported (Potential Implications of Recent and Proposed Changes in the Regulatory Oversight of Solid Organ Transplantation in the United States)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Research findings on Medicare and Medicaid are discussed in a new report. According to news reporting originating from Minneapolis, Minnesota, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "Every 6 months, the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) publishes evaluations of every solid organ transplant program in the United States, including evaluations of 1-year patient and graft survival. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Membership and Professional Standards Committee (MPSC) use SRTR's 1-year evaluations for regulatory review of transplant programs."

Funders for this research include Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the University of Minnesota, "Concern has been growing that the regulatory scrutiny of transplant programs with lower-than-expected outcomes is harmful, causing programs to undertake fewer high-risk transplants and leading to unnecessary organ discards. As a result, CMS raised its threshold for a 'Condition-Level Deficiency' designation of observed relative to expected 1-year graft or patient survival from 1.50 to 1.85. Exceeding this threshold in the current SRTR outcomes report and in one of the four previous reports leads to scrutiny that may result in loss of Medicare funding."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "For its part, OPTN is reviewing a proposal from the MPSC to also change its performance criteria thresholds for program review, to review programs with ' substantive clinical differences.' We review the details and implications of these changes in transplant program oversight."

For more information on this research see: Potential Implications of Recent and Proposed Changes in the Regulatory Oversight of Solid Organ Transplantation in the United States. American Journal of Transplantation, 2016;16(12):3371-3377. American Journal of Transplantation can be contacted at: Wiley-Blackwell, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - www.wiley.com/; American Journal of Transplantation - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1600-6143)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting B.L. Kasiske, University of Minnesota, Dept. of Med, Hennepin Cty Med Center, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States. Additional authors for this research include N. Salkowski, A. Wey, A.K. Israni and J.J. Snyder.

Keywords for this news article include: Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Health Policy, Medicare, University of Minnesota.

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