Scaling the CMS Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Model.

This Viewpoint discusses the potential benefits of expanding the Million Hearts Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Model of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Drivers and restrainers to adoption and spread of evidence-based health service delivery interventions: The case of CAPABLE.

CONTEXT: Very few programs improve physical function among older adults and those that do should achieve farther reach. METHODS: We used Force Field Analysis to examine drivers and restrainers for the CAPABLE program to impact the function of older adults throughout the United States. FINDINGS: We found 19 distinct drivers for CAPABLE. These include robust research findings demonstrating clinical and economic utility, expansion from an evidence-based program, grounding in theory, high value to older adults themselves, and common sense approach. A major policy environment shifting towards value-based payment and payer flexibility to experiment with social determinants significantly changed the perception of the program's value by key stakeholders. We found 8 distinct restrainers. CONCLUSIONS: Factors which drive and restrain CAPABLE provide lessons for other programs to move from research to sustainability. Policymakers, payers, and communities should look to proven programs as solutions to improve function for older adults and society.

Translating Knowledge into Action to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes: Medicare Expansion of the National Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention.

Policy Points Although preventable chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes carry a significant cost and health burden, few lifestyle interventions have been scaled at a national policy level. The translation of the National Diabetes Prevention Program lifestyle intervention from research to a Medicare-covered service can serve as a model for national adoption of other interventions that have the potential to improve population health. The successful translation of the National Diabetes Prevention Program has depended on the collaboration of government agencies, academic researchers, community-based healthcare providers, payers, and other parties. CONTEXT: Many evidence-based health interventions never achieve national implementation. This article analyzes factors that supported the translation and national implementation of a lifestyle change intervention to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes in individuals with prediabetes. METHODS: We used the Knowledge to Action framework, which was developed to map how science is translated into effective health programs, to examine how the evidence-based intervention from the 2002 Diabetes Prevention Program trial was translated into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's large-scale National Diabetes Prevention Program, eventually resulting in payment for the lifestyle intervention as a Medicare-covered service. FINDINGS: Key findings of our analysis include the importance of a collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and payers to encourage early adopters; development of evidence-based, national standards to support widespread adoption of the intervention; and use of public input from community organizations to scale the intervention to a national level. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis offers timely lessons for other high-value, scalable interventions attempting to move beyond the evidence-gathering phase and into translation and institutionalization.

Improving Social Needs Intervention Research: Key Questions for Advancing the Field.

Spurred by accumulated evidence documenting how social determinants of health shape health outcomes as well as the push for better value, the healthcare sector is embracing interventions that address patients' health-related social needs. An increasing number of healthcare organizations and payers are experimenting with strategies to identify needs and connect patients to resources that address identified needs with the goal of improving health outcomes, reducing avoidable utilization of costly health services, and improving health equity. Although many studies link social factors to health, relatively little published research exists about how the healthcare sector can effectively intervene to help identify and address social needs. This paper summarizes emerging evidence and identifies key areas where more research is needed to advance implementation and policy development. Although some healthcare-based social needs interventions have been shown to improve health and reduce avoidable utilization, important gaps remain in terms of comparative effectiveness and cost effectiveness of social needs intervention approaches. Additionally, the field would benefit from an increased understanding of mechanisms of action to maximize practitioners' ability to tailor interventions. More research is also needed to guard against unintended consequences and ensure these interventions reduce health inequities. Finally, implementation science research should identify supports and incentives for adoption of effective interventions. Focusing both public and private research efforts on these evidence gaps can help advance identification of interventions that maximize both health equity and healthcare value. SUPPLEMENT INFORMATION: This article is part of a supplement entitled Identifying and Intervening on Social Needs in Clinical Settings: Evidence and Evidence Gaps, which is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kaiser Permanente, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

How Much Does Medication Nonadherence Cost the Medicare Fee-for-Service Program?

BACKGROUND: Medication adherence is associated with lower health care utilization and savings in specific patient populations; however, few empirical estimates exist at the population level. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study was to apply a data-driven approach to obtain population-level estimates of the impact of medication nonadherence among Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions. RESEARCH DESIGN: Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) claims data were used to calculate the prevalence of medication nonadherence among individuals with diabetes, heart failure, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia. Per person estimates of avoidable health care utilization and spending associated with medication adherence, adjusted for healthy adherer effects, from prior literature were applied to the number of nonadherent Medicare beneficiaries. SUBJECTS: A 20% random sample of community-dwelling, continuously enrolled Medicare FFS beneficiaries aged 65 years or older with Part D (N=14,657,735) in 2013. MEASURES: Avoidable health care costs and hospital use from medication nonadherence. RESULTS: Medication nonadherence for diabetes, heart failure, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension resulted in billions of Medicare FFS expenditures, millions in hospital days, and thousands of emergency department visits that could have been avoided. If the 25% of beneficiaries with hypertension who were nonadherent became adherent, Medicare could save $13.7 billion annually, with over 100,000 emergency department visits and 7 million inpatient hospital days that could be averted. CONCLUSION: Medication nonadherence places a large resource burden on the Medicare FFS program. Study results provide actionable information for policymakers considering programs to manage chronic conditions. Caution should be used in summing estimates across disease groups, assuming all nonadherent beneficiaries could become adherent, and applying estimates beyond the Medicare FFS population.

Trends in the Relationship Between Obesity and Disability, 1988-2012.

Rising obesity rates, coupled with population aging, have elicited serious concern over the impact of obesity on disability in later life. Prior work showed a significant increase in the association between obesity and disability from 1988 to 2004, calling attention to disability as a cost of longer lifetime exposure to obesity. It is not known whether this trend has continued. We examined functional impairment and impairment in activities of daily living (ADL) (defined as severe or moderate to severe) for adults aged 60 years or older (n = 16,770) over 3 time periods in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The relative odds of impairment for obese individuals versus normal-weight individuals significantly increased from period 1 (1988-1994) to period 2 (1999-2004) for all outcomes. In period 3 (2005-2012), this association remained stable for functional and severe ADL impairment and decreased for moderate-to-severe ADL impairment. The fraction of population disability attributable to obesity followed a similar trend. The trend of an increasing association between obesity and disability has leveled off in more recent years, and is even improving for some measures. These findings suggest that public health and policy concerns that obesity would continue to become more disabling over time have not been borne out.

Population Health Measurement at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: Bridging the Gap Between Public Health and Clinical Quality.

As Medicare and Medicaid increasingly shift to alternative payment models focused on population-based payments, there is an urgent need to develop measures of population health that can drive health improvement. In response, an assessment and design project established a framework for developing population health measures from a payer perspective, conducted environmental scans of existing measures and available data infrastructure, and conducted a gap analysis informing measure development and infrastructure needs. The work, summarized here, makes recommendations for creating a set of core measures, demonstrates some of the key challenges in applying a traditional quality measure development framework to population health, and complements recent efforts by the National Academy of Medicine and others with a focus on a payer perspective.

Evaluating the relationship between muscle and bone modeling response in older adults.

Bone modeling, the process that continually adjusts bone strength in response to prevalent muscle-loading forces throughout an individual's lifespan, may play an important role in bone fragility with age. Femoral stress, an index of bone modeling response, can be estimated using measurements of DXA derived bone geometry and loading information incorporated into an engineering model. Assuming that individuals have adapted to habitual muscle loading forces, greater stresses indicate a diminished response and a weaker bone. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the associations of lean mass and muscle strength with the femoral stress measure generated from the engineering model and to examine the extent to which lean mass and muscle strength account for variation in femoral stress among 2539 healthy older adults participating in the Health ABC study using linear regression. Mean femoral stress was higher in women (9.51, SD=1.85Mpa) than in men (8.02, SD=1.43Mpa). Percent lean mass explained more of the variation in femoral stress than did knee strength adjusted for body size (R(2)=0.187 vs. 0.055 in men; R(2)=0.237 vs. 0.095 in women). In models adjusted for potential confounders, for every percent increase in lean mass, mean femoral stress was 0.121Mpa lower (95% CI: -0.138, -0.104; p<0.001) in men and 0.139Mpa lower (95% CI: -0.158, -0.121; p<0.001) in women. The inverse association of femoral stress with lean mass and with knee strength did not differ by category of BMI. Results from this study provide insight into bone modeling differences as measured by femoral stress among older men and women and indicate that lean mass may capture elements of bone's response to load.

Comparison of Handgrip and Leg Extension Strength in Predicting Slow Gait Speed in Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the relative predictive power of handgrip and leg extension strength in predicting slow walking. DESIGN: Report of correlative analysis from two epidemiological cohort studies. SETTING: Foundation of the National Institutes of Health Sarcopenia Project. PARTICIPANTS: Men and women aged 67 to 93 (N=6,766). MEASUREMENTS: Leg strength, handgrip strength, and gait speed were measured. Strength cutpoints associated with slow gait speed were developed using classification and regression tree analyses and compared using ordinary least squares regression models. RESULTS: The cutpoints of lower extremity strength associated with slow gait speed were 154.6 N-m in men and 89.9 N-m in women for isometric leg extension strength and 94.5 N-m in men and 62.3 N-m in women for isokinetic leg extension strength. Weakness defined according to handgrip strength (odds ratios (OR)=1.99 to 4.33, c-statistics=0.53 to 0.67) or leg strength (ORs=2.52 to 5.77; c-statistics=0.61 to 0.66) was strongly related to odds of slow gait speed. Lower extremity strength contributed 1% to 16% of the variance and handgrip strength contributed 3% to 17% of the variance in the prediction of gait speed depending on sex and mode of strength assessment. CONCLUSION: Muscle weakness of the leg extensors and forearm flexors is related to slow gait speed. Leg extension strength is only a slightly better predictor of slow gait speed. Thus, handgrip and leg extension strength appear to be suitable for screening for muscle weakness in older adults.

Asymmetry in CT Scan Measures of Thigh Muscle 2 Months After Hip Fracture: The Baltimore Hip Studies.

BACKGROUND: Hip fracture is an important problem for older adults with significant functional consequences. After hip fracture, reduced muscle loading can result in muscle atrophy. METHODS: We compared thigh muscle characteristics in the fractured leg with those in the nonfractured leg in participants from the Baltimore Hip Studies 7th cohort using computed tomography (CT) scan imaging. RESULTS: At 2 months postfracture, a single 10-mm axial CT scan was obtained at the midthigh level in 47 participants (26 men and 21 women) with a mean age of 80.4 years (range 65-96), and thigh muscle cross-sectional area (CSA), CSA of intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT), as well as mean radiological attenuation were measured. Total thigh muscle CSA was less on the side of the fracture by 9.2 cm(2) (95% CI: 5.9, 12.4 cm(2)), whereas the CSA of IMAT was greater by 2.8 cm(2) (95% CI: 1.9, 3.8 cm(2)) on the fractured side. Mean muscle attenuation was lower on the side of the fracture by 3.61 HU (95% CI: 2.99, 4.24 HU). CONCLUSIONS: The observed asymmetry is consistent with the effect of disuse and inflammation in the affected limb along with training effects in the unaffected limb due to the favoring of this leg with ambulation during the postfracture period.

Asymmetry in CT Scan Measures of Thigh Muscle 2 Months After Hip Fracture: The Baltimore Hip Studies.

BACKGROUND: Hip fracture is an important problem for older adults with significant functional consequences. After hip fracture, reduced muscle loading can result in muscle atrophy. METHODS: We compared thigh muscle characteristics in the fractured leg to those in the nonfractured leg in participants from the Baltimore Hip Studies 7th cohort using computed tomography scan imaging. RESULTS: At 2 months postfracture, a single 10mm axial computed tomography scan was obtained at the midthigh level in 43 participants (23 men, 20 women) with a mean age of 79.9 years (range: 65-96 years), and thigh muscle cross-sectional area, cross-sectional area of intermuscular adipose tissue, and mean radiologic attenuation were measured. Total thigh muscle cross-sectional area was less on the side of the fracture by 9.46cm(2) (95% CI: 5.97cm(2), 12.95cm(2)) while the cross-sectional area of intermuscular adipose tissue was greater by 2.97cm(2) (95% CI: 1.94cm(2), 4.01cm(2)) on the fractured side. Mean muscle attenuation was lower on the side of the fracture by 3.66 Hounsfield Units (95% CI: 2.98 Hounsfield Units, 4.34 Hounsfield Units). CONCLUSIONS: The observed asymmetry is consistent with the effect of disuse and inflammation in the affected limb along with training effects in the unaffected limb due to the favoring of this leg with ambulation during the postfracture period.

The FNIH sarcopenia project: rationale, study description, conference recommendations, and final estimates.

BACKGROUND: Low muscle mass and weakness are common and potentially disabling in older adults, but in order to become recognized as a clinical condition, criteria for diagnosis should be based on clinically relevant thresholds and independently validated. The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Biomarkers Consortium Sarcopenia Project used an evidence-based approach to develop these criteria. Initial findings were presented at a conference in May 2012, which generated recommendations that guided additional analyses to determine final recommended criteria. Details of the Project and its findings are presented in four accompanying manuscripts. METHODS: The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Sarcopenia Project used data from nine sources of community-dwelling older persons: Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility-Reykjavik Study, Boston Puerto Rican Health Study, a series of six clinical trials, Framingham Heart Study, Health, Aging, and Body Composition, Invecchiare in Chianti, Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study, Rancho Bernardo Study, and Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Feedback from conference attendees was obtained via surveys and breakout groups. RESULTS: The pooled sample included 26,625 participants (57% women, mean age in men 75.2 [±6.1 SD] and in women 78.6 [±5.9] years). Conference attendees emphasized the importance of evaluating the influence of body mass on cutpoints. Based on the analyses presented in this series, the final recommended cutpoints for weakness are grip strength <26kg for men and <16kg for women, and for low lean mass, appendicular lean mass adjusted for body mass index <0.789 for men and <0.512 for women. CONCLUSIONS: These evidence-based cutpoints, based on a large and diverse population, may help identify participants for clinical trials and should be evaluated among populations with high rates of functional limitations.

Grip strength cutpoints for the identification of clinically relevant weakness.

BACKGROUND: Weakness is common and contributes to disability, but no consensus exists regarding a strength cutpoint to identify persons at high risk. This analysis, conducted as part of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Sarcopenia Project, sought to identify cutpoints that distinguish weakness associated with mobility impairment, defined as gait speed less than 0.8 m/s. METHODS: In pooled cross-sectional data (9,897 men and 10,950 women), Classification and Regression Tree analysis was used to derive cutpoints for grip strength associated with mobility impairment. RESULTS: In men, a grip strength of 26-32 kg was classified as "intermediate" and less than 26 kg as "weak"; 11% of men were intermediate and 5% were weak. Compared with men with normal strength, odds ratios for mobility impairment were 3.63 (95% CI: 3.01-4.38) and 7.62 (95% CI 6.13-9.49), respectively. In women, a grip strength of 16-20 kg was classified as "intermediate" and less than 16 kg as "weak"; 25% of women were intermediate and 18% were weak. Compared with women with normal strength, odds ratios for mobility impairment were 2.44 (95% CI 2.20-2.71) and 4.42 (95% CI 3.94-4.97), respectively. Weakness based on these cutpoints was associated with mobility impairment across subgroups based on age, body mass index, height, and disease status. Notably, in women, grip strength divided by body mass index provided better fit relative to grip strength alone, but fit was not sufficiently improved to merit different measures by gender and use of a more complex measure. CONCLUSIONS: Cutpoints for weakness derived from this large, diverse sample of older adults may be useful to identify populations who may benefit from interventions to improve muscle strength and function.