Our Downfall

Falls have long been known to be a major problem among older people. Even when they don’t cause chronic disability or death, a single fall can lead to paralyzing anxiety. The medical costs alone, for hospital care, rehab, and post-acute care, are enormous: one estimate is that they reached $50 billion in 2015. But despite significant advances in knowledge about fall prevention, new data indicate that the problem is getting worse. In fact, a short “research letter” in JAMA indicates that age-adjusted mortality from falls among people aged 75 and older roughly doubled between 2000 and 2016. 

The data are shocking. The age-adjusted mortality rate from falls for men over 75 went from 60.7/100,000 in 2000 to 116.4/100,000 in 2016. For women, the numbers are even more dramatic, with age-adjusted mortality for those over 75 going from 46.3/100,000 in 2000 to 105.9/100,000 in 2016. 

To understand just how bad things are, it helps to break down the statistics by both age and gender. The overall crude mortality rate for individuals over 75 (2016 data) was 122.2/100,000. For the youngest cohort, those ages 75 to 79, the age-adjusted rate is 42.1/100,000 (52.3 for men). For the 80 to 84-year-old set, the age-adjusted rate doubles to 88.9/100,000 (105.8 for men). For the oldest old, the numbers are extraordinary: going from 171.2/100,000 for those 85 to 89 to 362.5/100,000 for the 90 to 94-year-olds to 630.8/100,000 for those age 95 or older. And the corresponding age-adjusted rates for men are even worse, ranging from 205.2/100,000 to 762.8/100,000.

With statistics like these, you might think no one has a clue as to how to prevent falls. You would be mistaken. Entering “fall prevention in the elderly” as a search term in Google Scholar for the period 2000-2016 yields 18,000 hits. The articles have titles such as “randomized controlled trial of falls prevention” and “falls and their prevention in elderly people: what does the evidence show?” The American Geriatrics Society and the British Geriatrics Society issued a joint clinical practice guideline for the assessment of fall risk and preventive strategies in 2010. Two years later, the CDC decreed falls in older people a major public health problem issue and released a variety of evidence-based materials to help physicians, patients, and families address the problem. Calling their program STEADI (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries), they offered, at no charge, a provider tool kit, a detailed algorithm and a handy pocket guide for clinicians, and a patient information sheet. 

Strategies to diminish falling in older people continue to proliferate. The American Hospital Association along with two other organizations came out with recommendations for addressing the problem in hospitals, where falls are also a major problem: between 700,000 and one million people fall in US hospitals each year and about one-third suffer injuries from their falls. As many as 11,000 people die as a result of the fall.  

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concluded that falls are preventable—and decided to penalize hospitals if a patient falls and either dies or sustains a serious injury as a result. Medicare considers such falls to be “never events” and will not reimburse hospitals for any additional costs associated with falls.

And yet, despite the research, the policies, and the programs, fall rates are rising, not falling. The burning question is, why?

Analyses of the obstacles—and successes—encountered when health systems tried to implement STEADI are revealing. When Oregon Health Sciences University introduced the program in their primary care clinics, they found the single most important factor conducive to adoption was the presence of clinical champions at each site. These clinicians spearheaded a team effort to develop a clinical workflow, customized for their site. They were also empowered to commission the development of electronic health record tools to document screening and assessment of falls. Other programs similarly reported that without strong endorsement by clinical leadership and the resources to implement and document fall-related activities, the initiatives were dead on arrival.

But if we examine the STEADI algorithm for fall risk screening, assessment, and intervention, we can identify other barriers. 

Falls often have multiple interacting causes and the most successful interventions tend to be correspondingly multidisciplinary. But medicine is much better at dealing with isolated problems than with messy, multifactorial ones: high blood pressure? Take a pill. Pneumonia? Use an antibiotic. 

Now look at the screening that the clinician is supposed to carry out. If a patient answers yes to any of a few key questions, the clinician is supposed to evaluate gait, strength and balance. That means performing a “timed up and go” test and possibly a 30-second chair stand or 4-stage balance test. How many internists or family physicians know what these tests are, let alone routinely perform them.

Then consider the kinds of interventions that STEADI suggests. For high risk patients, the recommendation is to refer to enhance mobility and improve balance, optimize vision, optimize home safety, and address foot problems. For all practical purposes, that means referring the patient to physical therapy, to ophthalmology, to occupational therapy, and to podiatry. Only rarely will a physician be equipped to do any of these things themselves. What’s left? Educate patients—another activity that physicians often delegate to others. Prescribe vitamin D and calcium—controversial these days. Manage and monitor hypotension and medications—the only activities that fall within the orbit of the typical internist or family physician.

What we see here is a profound educational deficit. What’s worse, few of these deficits are skills that physicians are likely to find interesting to acquire. I would argue that what most physicians are excited about is learning about prescribing new medications and using nifty new technology. As a whole—and of course there are exceptions—physicians are less enamored of low tech, low complexity interventions, especially when they deem them to lie outside the bounds of medicine. Advance care planning, which rests on communication skills, has similarly been an area that physicians have been reluctant to engage in. So, if the problem is largely cultural, then strong leadership and a supportive electronic health record, while necessary, are not going to suffice to fix it.

What is the way out? I think two strategies could make an enormous difference. First, nurse practitioners and physician assistants should educate themselves in fall risk screening, assessment and intervention and medical practices should gratefully turn to them for help. Second, patients and families need to clamor for falls assessment. In this era of consumer pressure, what the customer wants may be the key to change.

Better Watch Out, Better Do Cry

          The new tax law hasn’t passed yet—the Senate and the House still need to reconcile their disparate versions of the legislation—but odds are that we will have a bill very soon. And whatever compromise is reached is going to feature a major cut in the corporate tax rate, a big cut in the income tax rate for the wealthy, and modest or minimal reductions in the tax rate for the middle class, with a resulting whopping $1.5 trillion projected increase in the deficit over the next ten years. There’s only one way to compensate for that kind of deficit, and that’s cutting federal expenditures. And as Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, acknowledged just this week, that’s exactly what he wants to do. “Frankly, it’s the health-care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt,” he said in an interview. “We [will] spend more time on the health-care entitlements—because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

            Now I’m all in favor of reforms to the Medicare program. I’ve argued many times on this blog that Medicare is still too focused on acute care, on hospital-based care, and on technologically-intensive care, despite its recognition that chronic illness, in fact multiple chronic illness is what afflicts much of the older population. But Ryan et al aren’t talking about modifying Medicare; they are talking about slashing Medicare. I thought it might be a good idea to look at just what Medicare covers now, enabling us to better advocate for keeping what matters. I figured I’d start with a benefit about which there is widespread ignorance and much confusion, the home health benefit. It’s only a small slice of the Medicare pie—something like 3 percent, but when total Medicare expenditures top $632 billion, even 3 percent is far from trivial.

            As luck would have it, the AARP Public Policy Institute just last month wrote a brief report called “Understanding Medicare’s Home Health Benefit.” It’s important to realize that this affects a great many people—3.5 million, in fact, as of 2015. And as is always the case, protestations about “socialized medicine” notwithstanding, Medicare doesn’t actually provide any services—it just certifies home health agencies as meeting federal standards and reimburses them for their services, in accordance with Congressionally mandated criteria. In fact, there are over 12,000 home health agencies in the U.S.

            The services that Medicare authorizes under the Home Health benefit are intermittent. They include principally professional services, or what Medicare calls skilled care:  nursing care, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and social work. They also pay for limited home health aide care and some durable medical equipment, supplies such as wheelchairs and walkers.

            Not just anybody enrolled in Medicare qualifies for these services. To be eligible, you have to be homebound and a physician (it has to be an MD) has to certify that you’re homebound and that s/he has approved a “plan of care” for you that spells out what services you will receive and why you need them.  “Homebound,” in turn, means that you cannot leave your home without “considerable and taxing effort” and you need the help of another person or specialized equipment to go anywhere. A couple of years ago, Medicare introduced the requirement for a face to face visit to certify eligibility. A nurse practitioner or physician assistant working with a physician can make the face to face visit, but only the MD can sign off on the certification. Certification must be renewed every sixty days but can, in principle, continue as long as the services are necessary for the individual to maintain his level of functioning or to improve.

            Medicare has already invoked “re-balancing” to downwardly revise its payments for home care services. Another change under consideration include charging a co-pay of $150 or more if the home care service is initiated without a prior hospital stay. While this is meant to deter fraud and abuse, it sounds much like the notorious “three-day rule,” that says Medicare will only pay for a skilled nursing facility stay if it is preceded by a hospitalization of at least three days. The problem with that rule, as has been pointed out, is that far from assuring that patients don’t unnecessarily use SNF facilities, it promotes unnecessary use of the hospital as the only legitimate means to gain access to inpatient rehabilitative services! Similarly, if home physical therapy is what a patient needs, not hospital care with orthopedic consultation, MRIs, and other procedures, why should Medicare deprive patients of that option?

            Other strategies for slashing the home care budget may well be adopted unless we are vigilant. So you better watch out, better do cry, the Grinch is coming to town.

Two Steps Forward...

Paula Span of the New York Times did the geriatric community a great service this past week by highlighting a change in coverage for physical therapy services. It's a change that hasn't gotten much press because it sounds pretty technical, but it has enormous ramifications for older or disabled patients undergoing rehab. For many years, Medicare insisted it would not pay for physical therapy unless a patient was getting better. Once a patient had “reached a plateau,” reimbursement would cease. In a class action suit settled in 2013, Jimmo v Sibelius, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was advised that the statutory requirement that Medicare pay for physical therapy services that are “reasonable and necessary to prevent or slow deterioration” did not support the “improvement standard" CMS has been using to implement the law. Bottom line: CMS needs to change its approach. It was instructed to embark on an educational campaign to clarify the correct policy and to modify its “Medicare Benefit Policy Manual” to reflect the court’s interpretation. According to a ruling by a US District Court in Vermont, CMS has modified its manual but fallen short in the education realm.

I’m a geriatrician and I confess I hadn’t heard about these changes. And they're changes that matter. The new approach means that the many patients getting PT at home who are no longer improving in their function but who are very likely to deteriorate if they stop getting PT are eligible for “maintenance” therapy. It means that patients in a post-acute facility after hospitalization who are using PT to get back on their feet don’t necessarily lose their SNF coverage as soon as their gains in physical function level off—provided the therapist has compelling reason to believe that further therapy is required to consolidate those gains.

The ruling to date appears to be narrowly confined to therapy services. But surely the same argument holds for nursing care: older people at home who get visiting nurse services, for example, are not currently eligible for ongoing nursing care, even though they may relapse when acute services are discontinued.

On balance, what is effectively an expansion of coverage is good for patients. Discontinuing beneficial services is often short-sighted, resulting in more acute illnesses, more hospitalizations, and more costs. But there is a problem. How do you know whether ongoing therapy (or nursing care) is necessary to maintain the gains that have already been made? And if you don’t know (without stopping the therapy and seeing what happens), how can you avoid over-use? It’s not so simple. And it all hinges on the "reasonable and necessary" standard that governs all Medicare coverage decisions.

The "reasonable and necessary" language was written into the original 1965 Medicare statute. It has bedeviled Medicare for years. This language has been interpreted to mean that Medicare may not make decisions about what to pay for based on either cost or cost-effectiveness--though many thoughtful people believe that paying a huge amount of money for a procedure or drug that doesn't do much good is completely unreasonable. This language has been interpreted to mean that the results of comparative effectiveness studies, evaluations that have the potential to disclose, for example, that approach A is identical to approach B in effectiveness but is twice as expensive, may not be used to limit Medicare coverage.

The phrase "reasonable and necessary" has been the source of no end of trouble. It is meant to be clear and precise, but it's neither. Past attempts to modify the law to define more clearly what Medicare is required to cover have met with stiff resistance from device manufacturers and other corporate interests in maintaining the very permissive status quo. Increasing their access to physical therapy is likely to be a net benefit to patients, but over the long run, we need to find a better way to determine just what Medicare should pay for. That will require legislative action, and it will require a consensus among the relevant stakeholders. If we don't undertake such a process, we risk jeopardizing the viability of the Medicare program itself.