Gary Kaplan, Virginia Mason; George Bo-Linn, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Pascale Carayon,
University of Wisconsin-Madison; Peter Pronovost, Johns Hopkins University;
William Rouse, Stevens Institute of Technology; Proctor Reid, National Academy of Engineering;
and Robert Saunders, Institute of Medicine1
Although the U.S. health system excels in several areas, its overall performance remains uneven in terms of safety, quality, value, and the health outcomes achieved. One important lever to address these performance gaps is the use of structured, evidence-based systems-engineering approaches, which have been used successfully by many other industries. When these approaches have been applied to health and health care, they have often brought about significant improvements in care quality, value, patient safety, patient experience, and overall health outcomes. Yet, such approaches remain generally underutilized in the health system, and their potential for improvement remains largely untapped. Read full article here….
In July I published an article in JAMA, co-authored by Don Berwick, regarding the critical need for Medicare data to be available for physicians to use it to improve healthcare outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries. http://www.createvalue.org/blog/post/?bid=321
The crux of the article is based on real experience with massive data sets at the Wisconsin Health Information Organization (WHIO). WHIO has proven that claims data can be aggregated in a HIPPA compliant fashion and that the entire data set can be released to physician groups to compare performance across certain episode treatment groups. Physicians can compare to the competition on resource use and quality and search for benchmarks to improve care.
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Dr. John Toussaint is interviewed via webcast by The Post Crescent regarding healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act, and current experiments in the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, Wisconsin Health Information Organization, and Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality.
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Dr. John Toussaint is interviewed via webcast by The Post Crescent regarding healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act, and current experiments in the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, Wisconsin Health Information Organization, and Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality.
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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 available to most organizations who are interested in it to improve the cost and quality of healthcare. The other state organizations allow very limited access to this data. Most of these initiatives are state owned and run and do not support private approaches to using the data to improve care.
The strength of the Wisconsin initiative is the multistakeholder nature of the work. Having insurers,providers,employers,and state government all working together to develop a common approach is critical for the best outcome and has led to the success of WHIO. Many problems still exist but a multistakeholder approach is the best way to solve them.
To read their article, click here – commonwealtharticle1439_Love_allpayer_claims_databases_ib_v2
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.
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Are you sick and tired of all the talk about BIG DATA in healthcare? Me too.
But…that doesn’t mean that it’s not important. Just not now, not yet. There is some serious ground work to be done before big data will be a big deal for the healthcare community. And…if we don’t do this right it will be BIG EXPENSE for LITTLE VALUE. Just another form of very expensive waste in an industry already struggling to contain costs and bring value to the patient.
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Mike Stoecklein, Network Director, shares his thoughts on the systems that have produced (and continue to produce) the kinds of thinking that drive our actions.
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We all went to the wrong school. The courses we took, the way we were taught, and trained and treated were all wrong.
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The Center for Lean Healthcare Research (CLHR) is a formalization of work that has been going on informally for the last two years. Involving healthcare researchers at some of America’s most prestigious academic institutions, the CLHR will focus on scientific study of the lean methodology applied to healthcare. Sharon Schweikhart, associate professor and director of the Master’s in Health Administration program at Ohio State, has been appointed director of the center.
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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 pioneer program which can be fixed; but it will take significant leadership from multiple stakeholders. The article describes what must change.
To read the article, click here – Pioneer ACO Model Needs to Change.JAMA.10.2.13
