I was a speaker at the ABIM foundation yearly meeting July 31st. Uwe Rheinhardt and Donald Berwick spoke before me. The following is my reflection on the conversations that followed. As the nation was hurtling toward a possible default (which was averted thankfully) America’s healthcare leaders including Don Berwick, CMS administrator, Peter Lee from the […]
The Center is focused on three core concepts; developing payment systems that reward value,making healthcare performance transparent to patients, and redesigning care delivery to remove waste. The CMMI officials visited Appleton to develop a better understanding of the work that has been done in Wisconsin to deliver on these important aspects of health reform. We […]
The Medicare data release rule called the “Availability of Medicare Data for Performance Measures” or rule CMS 5059-P has been in a comment period for a few weeks. The Wisconsin Health Information Organization commented on the rule this week and these comments are included at the bottom of this blog. There are a number of […]
As the founding Chairman of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization (WHIO) it’s encouraging that we may be getting closer to adding Medicare data to the all payer data bases being created in the U.S.Two significant problems still exist however. The problems are 1.The cost of accessing the data 2.The timeliness of the data As the […]
A number of famous writers have been touting the use of checklists as a way to create patient safety. Here’s the problem with this thinking told in the form of a real life story. Years ago when I was still CEO I was alerted by the president of the hospital that a wrong sided surgery had occurred. She assured […]
Recently the Center received a call from Dr. Berwick to send results from Healthcare Value Network members that show what he called double wins, both cost and quality improvements together. In 24 hours network members came up with this remarkable series of improvements derived from their lean work. Does Lean work in healthcare? The following […]
In this blog piece John Torinus describes how Serigraph continues to reduce utilization and costs keep going down,now one third the average cost for the nation. Torinus has been a real pioneer in what employers should do to control healthcare costs. This report again shows what can happen when employers get engaged and have a […]
The Partnership for Patients Initiative was recently announced by CMS. It aims to reduce patient harm and readmission rates. CMS kicked off its Partnership for Patients webinar series with John Toussaint and Gary Kaplan presenting. This is a serious statement if not an outright endorsement by CMS that the Toyota Production System is an important methodology for […]
Today is the final day for submission of comments regarding the proposed ACO rules. The Center has had significant concerns regarding the initial rules and has submitted a series of suggested changes to the rules. The Center has recently published concerns from several of the participants of the Physician Group Practice Demo as well as others […]
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill along with Toyota researcher Steven Spear and Richard Shannon M.D.,Chair of the University of Pennsylvania Medicine Department spent the last two days at the front line observing ThedaCare’s lean transformation work. Paul O’Neill is a stickler on quality. In fact, during his tenure as CEO of Alcoa he made it the […]
