The Commonwealth Organization has focused recently on important transparency initiatives going on throughout the country. This article compares all the state administrative data sets and the details of their development. The fundamental difference between WHIO and the other administrative data bases is that WHIO is a publicly available. Although the data access is not free it is […]
A broad coalition of improvement organizations, all payor claims database organizations, hospital associations, medical societies, and foundations have signed a letter sent to Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Rep. Dave Camp and Rep. Sander Levin regarding Medicare data release.
As reported by CMS in July, the Bellin ThedaCare Pioneer ACO achieved a 4.6% reduction in the total cost of care for 20,000 Medicare beneficiaries from 2011-2012. What the report didn’t cover was the fact that total revenue actually went down as care was delivered more efficiently. This is a fundamental flaw of the existing […]
A pioneer in applying lean methodology in healthcare, ThedaCare is redefining the patient experience though a collaborative care system. Results to date show that the inpatient-care model is succeeding in improving safety, efficiency, and effectiveness. blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/redefining-the-patient-experience-with-collaborative-care/
There has been much debate lately on just how to make healthcare information transparent. I have blogged for years and recently published a detailed article in JAMA co-authored by Don Berwick on the subject. In the article, we describe both how Medicare data should be released and what it should be used for.
The argument that “we do not make cars” just does not hold water anymore. The lean methodology has been shown to work in almost every industry. Food banks? Of course. Food banks have processes to deliver products and services just like car manufacturers or hospitals. Most of the time these services are delivered in an […]
It is critical for the future of our country to begin to achieve breakthroughs on cost and quality of medical care delivery. This week, the federal government reported that there have been some breakthroughs with the Pioneer ACO program. In fact, The Bellin- ThedaCare Pioneer ACO was able to show a 4.6 % reduction in […]
Donald Berwick, MD and John Toussaint, MD discuss how removing barriers to the fee-for-service data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would help increase efficiency in health care delivery, reduce costs and improve the quality of care. To download the article, click here
What do Paul O’Neill, James Womack PhD, Francois de Brantes, Alan Gleghorn, Don Shilton, Henry Hawthorne, Alan Aviles, and John Toussaint MD have in common? They were all keynote speakers last week at what attendees have said was the best Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit yet. But that’s not all. They also are CEOs or former […]
Today, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by John Toussaint, M.D. and Donald Berwick, M.D. which describes several important changes that must happen legislatively and from a policy standpoint to lower cost and improve quality for Medicare beneficiaries. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed for fee-for-service Medicare data to be […]
