The Senate Health Committee released their version of the health reform bill on July 15th.
One thing is for sure, there will be a proliferation of new agencies and a bolstering of the power of AHRQ. In other words,more centralization of quality measurement oversight, quality improvement activity, and best practices.
I see this as the antithesis of what it is going to take to reduce the cost and improve the quality of the American health care industry.This bill should be focused on pushing quality measurement and improvement to the regional level where excellent efforts are already in place such as at the Wisconsin Collaborative for Health Care Quality and the Minnesota Measurement Community. These organizations already report on many physician quality measures and could easily do what the bill is suggesting needs to be done in Washington.In addition,someone in Washington is going to determine health care best practice? I doubt it. In fact, bureaucrats responsible for determining and disseminating best practices will end up doing just the opposite. Those true innovators will be handcuffed with useless projects and rules coming from bureaucrats who have no experience in improving the quality and cost of health care delivery.
This bill does nothing to promote value and,in fact, will reverse the progress many healthcare providers have been making.
I would suggest that congress ought to spend time listening to the organizations who have joined the Health Care Value Leaders Network facilitated by this Center and the Lean Enterprise Institute These organizations understand delivery of better value and are committed to lowering the cost of care and improving quality.
The following is list of network members who our congressional representatives ought to be listening to.
Group Health Cooperative – Seattle, WA
Gundersen Lutheran Health System– La Crosse, WI
Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates - Boston, MA
Hotel Dieu-Grace Hospital – Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Iowa Health System – Des Moines, IA
Johns Hopkins Medicine – Baltimore, MD
Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, New London, CT
Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network – Allentown, PA
McLeod Health– Florence, SC
Mercy Medical Center – Cedar Rapids, IA
Park Nicollet Health Services – Minneapolis, MN
St. Boniface General Hospital – Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
St. Joseph Health System- Orange, CA
ThedaCare – Appleton, WI
UCLA Health System– Los Angles, CA
University of Michigan Health System - Ann Arbor, MI
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