Pharos Innovations

Short Summary of Intervention as described by company:

“Today, Health Systems, Physician Groups and Accountable Care Organizations are utilizing Pharos programs to:

• Reduce health care costs and increase care quality
• Increase care coordinator case loads and population penetration
• Increase care plan and treatment compliance and improve clinical outcomes
• Drive reduced readmissions and increased gain share bonus participation”

Materials Being Reviewed

Evaluation of Tel-Assurance Heart Failure Module

Summary of key figures and outcomes:

79% reduction in admissions, and an 85% reduction in total costs ($4458 per patient per month falling almost immediately to $652).

Questions for Pharos Innovations:

Your savings happened immediately after the program began. No other disease management program claims that its savings are immediate and yet many programs have interventions similar to yours. What did you do differently to make you so successful?

ANS: Refused to answer

You write that to be included in the analysis during this 18-month study period, a member need only have participated for 15 days. How were you able to achieve such dramatic results over such a long period with only 15 days’ required participation?

ANS: Refused to answer

The most dramatic decline in admissions – about 90% — happened the first month (February) of the program. Are you saying that you were able to find all these members’ contact information, schedule the phone calls to the members and their caregivers to convince them to join the program, schedule initial followup calls to start trying to manage the members, make the scheduled phone calls, collect the information, get members to visit their doctors, and adjust lifestyles and medications — all by February 1 for a program starting January 1?

ANS: Refused to answer

Your “unchanged” matched cohort seems to have declined by 25% over the course of your intervention. How are you defining “unchanged”?

ANS: Refused to answer

Why did Wellpoint ask you to take their name off this study?

ANS: Refused to answer

Can you get someone at Wellpoint to endorse this program in the space below?

ANS: No one from Wellness endorsed the program in this space

If admissions declined 79% but total costs declined 85%, wouldn’t the use of physicians, labs, drugs, home care and all other services have to decline by much more than 85% in order to have the average decline in costs be 85%?   Very conservatively assuming that admissions account for only half of all costs for CHF patients, wouldn’t all other costs need to decline to about $200/month, which is much lower than a typical commercially insured person spends and far lower than a Medicare member spends?

ANS: Refused to answer

Wouldn’t such a low non-admissions spending figure mean that most patients would no longer be taking most meds or insulin, seeing doctors regularly, getting tested, participating in therapy, etc.?

ANS: Refused to answer

What did the New England Journal of Medicine get wrong when they tested your intervention and found no impact at all, which is much different from an 85% cost savings?

ANS: Refused to answer

Pharos isn’t just validated, but rather it is claimed to be strongly validated. Can you distinguish being “strongly validated” from garden-variety validation?

ANS: Refused to answer

Who did that “strong validation” and can they explain their rationale below?

ANS: Refused to answer

Why, if you can’t answer these questions that have been asked for several years now and Wellpoint has withdrawn its name, is this study still on your website?

ANS: Refused to answer