Study finds bid to cut Medicare costs failed

CHICAGO

An ambitious effort to cut costs and keep aging, sick Medicare patients out of the hospital mostly didn’t work, a government-contracted study found.

The disappointing results show how tough it is to manage older patients with chronic diseases, who often take multiple prescriptions, see many doctors and sometimes get conflicting medical advice.

The study showed just how difficult it is to change the habits of older patients and their sometimes inflexible doctors. And it points up the challenges the Obama administration will face in trying to reform health care for an aging nation.

Most of the patients had serious, but common, age-related illnesses including diabetes, heart disease and lung disease. Programs were set up at 15 centers across the country. Only two cut the number of times these patients were hospitalized, and those are still in operation. None saved Medicare any money.

The authors of the study called the results “underwhelming.” An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, where the study appears Wednesday, used the term “sobering.”

“The only way you can really do it is by changing patients’ behavior and by changing physicians’ behavior, and both things are really hard to do,” said study author Randall Brown, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., in Princeton, N.J., which was hired to evaluate the programs.

Often, these patients need to stop smoking, or lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier foods, a challenge even for generally healthy people. Those changes are especially tough for sick, older patients who often are set in their ways.

“The same thing with physicians,” Mr. Brown said. “A lot of them feel like they know how to take care of patients, so why do they need a nurse calling up and asking them why the patient isn’t on some certain medication?”

Many patients in the study had more than one chronic disease, a common Medicare scenario. In 2002 alone, half of Medicare patients had been treated for five or more ailments, and they accounted for 75 percent of Medicare spending, the study authors noted.

Seeking ways to reduce those costs and improve care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services selected 15 proposals for test-site programs in 2002. The sites developed their own programs, enrolling a total of 18,309 fee-for-service Medicare patients through 2006.

About half of the patients got the usual care. The others got more intensive, coordinated care. That often involved nurses who acted as go-betweens, helping doctors give patients clear, appropriate advice; counseling patients on changing bad habits and recognizing worrisome symptoms. The nurses were available on a regular basis by phone or in person to answer patients’ questions.

Jim Reid, a 74-year-old retired Pennsylvania welder, was among study patients who got coordinated care.

When he enrolled in 2002 in a test program run by Health Quality Partners, a nonprofit group in Doylestown, Pa., he was obese, had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and pre-diabetes.

But Mr. Reid was a rare success story.

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