Recent News Stories
The following is a selection of recent stories in the news that discuss or feature some of the issues being covered and discussed in the Remaking American Medicine series and the RAM camapign. New stories will be added periodically.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Washington Bureau
November 27, 2005, Sunday
A lauded health care reformer moves on
By Frank Greve
WASHINGTON -- Dr. Kenneth Kizer's been saving lives wholesale for most of his professional life, and if his latest ideas work out he might save yours.
Chances are you've already encountered his approach. Kizer, one of America's leading health care reformers, is a big fan of such strategies as:
- Electronic medical recordkeeping to aid and speed patient care.
- Bar codes to unfailingly match hospital and nursing home patients to their medicines.
- Computer-aided medical records research to determine which treatments and drugs -- and which doctors and hospitals -- perform best.
- Public release of care quality report cards.
Kizer, 54, a burly and brilliant workaholic -- driven, some colleagues say, by being orphaned at age 12 and surviving in a succession of foster homes -- is-n't alone in pushing these initiatives. But in the vanguard of medical reform-ers, Kizer's got a unique credential: He's already delivered in one big arena.
Moreover, Kizer did it in the '90s in what was then the most widely dispar-aged hospital chain in the United States: the 173-hospital system run by the De-partment of Veterans Affairs.
It now provides veterans with "significantly better" health care than Medi-care's fee-for-service program, according to a comparison published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003.
That success came two professional lives ago for Kizer. More recently, he's created and run a Washington group of more than 300 physician, hospital, insurer and consumer representatives whose purpose is to agree on specific standards to measure medical care quality.
Some standards are as simple as whether a hospitalized heart attack victim gets a beta-blocker drug to ward off the harmful effects of stress hormones on the heart. Heart patients who don't get beta-blockers after heart attacks are 40 percent more likely to be dead a year later.
The blocker criterion is one of 68 hospital care quality measures endorsed by Kizer's National Quality Forum. Such standards are the essential first step to making telling comparisons in health care, according to the dean of U.S. medical care reformers, Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, based in Cambridge, Mass.
In the long run, well-applied quality measures, by driving out bad care, will help to deliver more good care at lower cost, reformers such as Kizer and Ber-wick believe. Ultimately, the U.S. health care system would pay doctors to keep patients healthy -- a system called pay-for-performance -- rather than to treat their illnesses.
Kizer's success in getting competing health care interests to agree on hun-dreds of measures of quality care was " a massive political achievement," and "a major win for the country," according to Berwick.
Kizer announced earlier this month that he'd be leaving the National Quality Forum in December to take over Medsphere Systems Corp., of Aliso Viejo, Calif., a small health information-technology company whose goal is to cut the price of electronic patient recordkeeping by using the free, publicly available open-source system that the VA devised.
About 10 percent of U.S. hospitals currently keep patient records electroni-cally in a dynamic form that enables doctors to diagnose, monitor and manage their patients.
The difference that sophisticated health IT can make is clear in VA hospi-tals. When laptop-bearing personnel enter a patient's room, they can review not just the patient's latest data but the medical record of every VA medical en-counter the patient's had since the mid-80s.
If the patient's been stricken while traveling, records can be transmitted instantly to or from the VA hospital the patient normally uses. Records can also be shipped to consulting VA physicians or downloaded by care-monitoring loved ones if the patient agrees.
VA doctors also enter drug orders on their computers. If they've missed a po-tential allergic reaction or a dangerous drug combination, the computer flags a warning. When the hospital pharmacist fills the prescription, the system spits out a strip of bar code that goes on the medicine, saying what it is, who it's for, when it's to be given, at what dose, and by whom.
G. Sue Kinnick, a VA hospital nurse from Topeka, Kan., who died last year, came up with the VA's bar code system while returning a rental car in Seattle. Drug-related mistakes contribute heavily to the medical errors that kill an es-timated 44,000 and 98,000 Americans annually. Why not use the same hand-held reader with which attendants matched cars and renters to help nurses match bar-coded drugs with a bar-coded ID on the patient's wrist?
Kizer, while the VA's undersecretary for health in 1994-99, loved the idea. "It wouldn't have gone anywhere without upper management's leadership," said Russell Carlson, the nurse-consultant for the bar code system now in place in every VA hospital.
For turning around VA health care, Kizer earned kudos from lawmakers such as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But he also antagonized them by reducing in-patient beds and hospital staff. After several senators put holds on Kizer's renomina-tion to pressure him to restore some of those cuts, Kizer resigned.
Nancy-Ann DeParle, a quality forum board member, attributes Kizer's tough-minded confidence to the dire straits he grew up in.
Kizer's first daylong job was at age 5 or 6, he recalled in an interview, when he earned three cents a quart for picking strawberries. He also ironed for his mother, who took in laundry.
His father, a factory worker in Boring, Ore., outside Portland, died of a heart attack when Kizer was 6 and the two were shopping. His mother committed suicide when he was 12, leaving five children wards of the state.
In the eighth grade, Kizer attended five schools in Oregon, California and Nevada, he recalled.
He settled in Reno, Nev., for three years of high school, where he proved a successful, popular student and ultimately was class president. He learned what he called "helpful" ideals and attitudes from football and track.
The early loss of his parents and some nasty aspects of foster care, Kizer said, "made me more serious ... made me want to be successful."
Kizer won honors as a pre-med student at Stanford, where he supplemented his scholarship with jobs as an emergency room orderly, library clerk and fireman. He graduated from UCLA medical school and, facing the draft, served a stint as group medical officer for Navy ordnance disposal units headquartered in Hawaii.
Then-California Gov. George Deukmejian named Kizer to head the state's emer-gency medical care authority in 1983 and, later, to direct the state's Depart-ment of Health Services. There, Kizer led the most successful anti-smoking cam-paign in any state's history, cracked down on nursing home abuses and, at age 33, suffered the nickname "Baby Doc."
Kizer's wife and high school sweetheart, Suzanne, lives in Sacramento, to which he's commuted from Washington on weekends, often writing medical journal articles on the plane. They have two grown daughters.
For recreation, Kizer likes to dive in the South Pacific. Friends who've gone along say he relishes swimming with sharks.
Harold Gracey, Jr., the VA's chief of staff in Kizer's era, who's now re-tired, offered Kizer the highest of praise. "The things that are attributed to him, he really did," Gracey said. "He wasn't one of those appointees who shine other people's work up, advertise it and take credit for it."
PR Newswire US
November 15, 2005
Former Secretary Tommy Thompson Makes Business Case for Medicare's
New Drug Benefit at National Business Coalition on Health Conference;
Health Plans and Employer Coalitions Recognized for Health Care Innovation and Leadership
PHOENIX, AZ-- To accelerate the nation's progress toward cost effective, high quality health care for American employers and their em-ployees, the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH), a non- profit organi-zation of employer-based health coalitions, held its 10th Annual Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona this week. Former Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tommy Thompson spoke at the event regarding Medicare's new drug benefit for re-tirees on the first day of enrollment for the prescription drug plan. NBCH also announced the recipients of its eValue8(TM) Health Plan Innovation Awards and first annual Membership Achievement Award.
"NBCH welcomes Tommy Thompson's participation in our Annual Conference," said Andrew Webber, president and CEO of NBCH. "The Medicare Modernization Act re-flects a renewed commitment between the public and private sector for the pur-pose of providing full access to care for the elderly. It is our hope that this act will encourage employers to continue to provide prescriptions and health care benefits for their retirees."
Former Secretary Thompson noted, "By strengthening and modernizing Medicare, we will provide all seniors with comprehensive health options, including pre-scription drug coverage. Today's milestone is important as it gives seniors more choices in benefits that best meet their needs."
Western Regional Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Jeff Flick, also addressed the conference and reinforced the value of public and pri-vate sector partnerships, as the nation rewards better quality care through pay-ment reform. Before employers can offer financial incentives to better provid-ers, there must be transparency in the market place. Medicare, as the country's largest payor of health care benefits, can catalyze payment reform by demanding health plans and providers produce outcomes reports. Health plans that are lead-ing the pack and consistently demonstrating improvement were also recognized at the Annual Conference through the eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Awards.
eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Awards
The NBCH eValue8 Awards, sponsored by Novo Nordisk, acknowledge organizations that have implemented ground-breaking programs for value-based purchasers and provide a forum to communicate best practices.
The 2005 eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Award winners are:
- Aetna for Disparities/Chronic Disease Management
- Patient Choice for Consumer Engagement and Support/Provider Measurement
- Medica for Behavioral Health
All health plans that participate in the NBCH eValue8 process have made a commitment to improve the value of purchaser health care spending. The plans se-lected for the Health Plan Innovation Awards have demonstrated strategies to ad-dress some of the most difficult issues facing health systems and purchasers: cultural disparities; chronic disease management; adolescent depression and sub-stance use disorders; provider performance measurement, transparency and re-wards. By sharing these innovative programs with other health plans and purchas-ers, NBCH promotes improvement in community health systems across the country.
Over 100 programs were submitted for consideration and 12 were selected as finalists for the awards based on information submitted on "Best Practices and Innovations" as part of NBCH's 2005 eValue8 submission tool. The finalists were reviewed by a panel of judges from the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion, The Leapfrog Group, George Washington University and the Buyers Health Care Action Group. Based on creativity, effectiveness and replicability, three final winners were selected.
Membership Achievement Award
Also at this conference, NBCH awarded the Employers Health Purchasing Corpo-ration of Ohio the first annual Membership Achievement Award in recognition of their superior leadership in health care quality reform. The award, sponsored by Astra Zeneca, acknowledges and rewards a member coalition's efforts to improve the quality of health care in their community.
Employers Health Purchasing Corporation of Ohio was chosen by a committee of coalition representatives as an outstanding coalition, based on two projects submitted for consideration. Those projects included a Diabetes Management Ini-tiative and a Hospital Public Reporting project that involved community buy-in from a host of stakeholders including Hospitals, providers, employers and plans. Both projects reflect innovation, sustainability and positively impact their community.
About the National Business Coalition on Health
NBCH is a national, non-profit, membership organization of more than 70 em-ployer-based health care coalitions, representing over 10,000 employers across the United States. NBCH and its members are dedicated to value-based purchasing of health care services through the collective action of public and private pur-chasers. In developing, identifying and disseminating best practices in value-based purchasing strategies, NBCH seeks to accelerate the nation's progress to-wards safe, efficient, high quality health care. For more information, call 202-775-9300 or visit http://www.nbch.org/ .
CONTACT: Cary Conway, +1-972-731-9242, cary@conwaycommunication.com , for
the National Business Coalition on Health
PR Newswire US
November 9, 2005
Medsphere Names Renowned Healthcare Leader as CEO;
Chairman Kenneth W. Kizer MD, MPH, Takes Reins; Open Source Pioneer Larry
Augustin to Transition From Interim CEO to Board Member
ALISO VIEJO, Calif. -- Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading commercial provider of open source information technology solutions for the healthcare industry, announced today that Kenneth W. Kizer, MD, MPH, will be expanding his role by assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer, in addition to his current position as Chairman of the Board, effective December 1, 2005. As CEO, Kizer will leverage his more than 25 years of experience in healthcare to focus and direct Medsphere's rapid growth in the healthcare IT sector. Former CEO Larry Augustin will continue to assist Medsphere as a board member and strategic advisor to the company.
Kizer has long been an advocate of information technology as an enabler for improving healthcare safety and quality. He recognized the critical importance of healthcare IT when he was Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and pioneered the system-wide implementation of an electronic health record, bar code medication administration, and other IT inno-vations years before the healthcare industry embraced the importance of IT.
"In my new role as CEO, I will be able to focus on broadly disseminating a proven healthcare IT solution that has been adapted and improved for commercial healthcare use," said Kizer. "I believe that Medsphere's approach to healthcare IT represents a disruptive technology that has the potential to fundamentally change the healthcare IT paradigm and revolutionize the whole industry."
For the past 6 years, Kizer has been the President and CEO of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a Washington, DC-based private, voluntary consensus stan-dards setting organization devoted to improving American healthcare through pub-lic reporting of healthcare performance data, among other things. In recognition for his efforts to improve healthcare quality in the U.S., this week Kizer is being awarded the 2005 Ernest A. Codman Award (in the individual category) by The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).
"Ken Kizer is an internationally respected healthcare leader. His vision, ex-perience and leadership will add enormous value to our company," said Chief Technology Officer and Medsphere Co-Founder, Steve Shreeve. "Ken's pioneering advocacy for healthcare performance measurement and quality, coupled with his understanding of the transformational role that information technology can play in healthcare delivery, are a perfect fit for our organization. His vision for the future of healthcare will be an excellent guide for Medsphere's technology and product strategy."
Prior to NQF, Kizer served for 5 years as the Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In this capacity, Dr. Kizer was the highest ranking physician in the federal government and the chief executive officer of the veterans health care system. He has been widely recognized as being the chief architect and driving force behind the radical transformation of VA healthcare that occurred between 1995 and 1999. Today, the VA is recognized as a model of excellence in patient safety and healthcare quality due to Dr. Kizer's leadership and aggressive quality improvement agenda. The VA is the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., having a present budget of some $30 billion, approximately 200,000 staff and more than 1,300 sites of care delivery.
Dr. Kizer succeeds Larry Augustin as Medsphere's CEO. Augustin joined Medsphere in January 2005, subsequent to the company's series B funding. He had been with Azure Venture Capital in Palo Alto, California, prior to that. Before that he was the CEO and Founder of VA Software.
"Medsphere has continued to meet the technology, product, and service mile-stones enabled by the Series B funding. We have formalized our organizational structure, brought in key management personnel, solidified our open source strategy, and engineered the technology to make it accessible and affordable, bringing a robust product to market," said Augustin. "The company is now enter-ing a new phase aimed at rapidly disseminating its open source healthcare IT products and reshaping the nation's healthcare IT vision. Dr. Kizer's leadership will give Medsphere the healthcare experience and industry expertise to take the company to that next level. I look forward to continuing to help drive the com-pany's growth."
In addition to Medsphere, Augustin currently serves on the board of directors for VA Software, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), Linux International, Linux Mark Institute, JBoss, SugerCRM, Pentaho and Fonality.
About Medsphere Systems Corporation
Medsphere is the leading commercial provider of open source technology for the healthcare industry. The company is revolutionizing healthcare by delivering commercially supported software based on the proven VistA electronic health re-cord (EHR) developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Under the brand name of OpenVista(R), Medsphere offers a portfolio of products and professional ser-vices for hospitals, clinics and integrated delivery networks. The company ad-dresses the capital constraints of the healthcare industry through an innovative subscription-based pricing model. Medsphere's experienced team of healthcare technology professionals and unique suite of rapid implementation tools deliver unprecedented time to value recognition. For more information, visit http://www.medsphere.com/ .
Medsphere(R), the Medsphere logo and OpenVista(TM) are trademarks in the
United States and/or other countries of Medsphere Systems Corporation. Any
other company or product names mentioned herein may be the property of their
respective companies.
CONTACT: Frank Pecaitis, Vice President, Sales and Marketing of
Medsphere Systems Corporation, +1-949-297-4072, frank.pecaitis@medsphere.com ;
or Syreeta Mussante of Sparkpr, +1-415-321-1865, syreeta@sparkpr.com , for
Medsphere -
U.S. Newswire
November 7, 2005
Grant Allows ACP to Create New Center for Practice Innovation
A two-year $996,000 grant to create the Center for Practice Innovation (CPI) by the American College of Physicians (ACP) was announced today by the Physicians' Foundation for Health Systems Excellence (PFHSE).
The CPI will respond to the quality improvement and practice management needs of small and midsize internal medicine practices. It will support a "Patient-Centered and Physician- Guided" model of care in which the needs of patients and their families serve as the core design principles.
PFHSE, which announced $16 million in grants to 26 organizations today, is dedicated to promoting high quality health care, and gives particular emphasis to initiatives that assist physicians in improving and enhancing the quality of care received by patients. "This foundation was created for the sole purpose of helping practicing physicians improve the clinical care of their patients," PFHSE President Tim Norbeck noted. "I'm not sure that there is another foundation in this country with a similar mission."
The CPI will broadly share products, programs and tools - as well as lessons learned from the operation. Success will be measured through data collected for selected clinical measures, patient satisfaction, physician/staff satisfaction, and economic indicators of practice function.
"Our belief," said ACP President C. Anderson Hedberg, MD, FACP, "is that the financial concerns of physicians regarding the implementation and management of the changing practice environment will be addressed through office redesign, attention to quality innovation, enhanced patient satisfaction, and practice growth."
In praising the support of the foundation, ACP's Vice President of Practice Advocacy and Improvement Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, FACP, stated, "The foundation's generous grant will enable ACP to provide new practice-level support and to test innovative approaches aimed at achieving change in practice management, physician education and patient safety/disease management."
The ACP Center for Practice Innovation will formally begin operations in Washington on Jan. 1, 2006.
The American College of Physicians is the largest medical- specialty organization and the second-largest physician group in the United States. ACP members include 119,000 internal medicine physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students. Internists specialize in the prevention, detection and treatment of illness in adults.
Contact: David Kinsman, 202-261-4554, dkinsman@acponline.org ; Jacquelyn Blaser, 202-261-4572, jblaser@acponline.org ; Michael Barr, 202-261-4531, mbarr@acponline.org
U.S. Newswire
November 1, 2005
Joint Commission Names Organization, Individual Recipients
of 2005 Ernest Amory Codman Awards
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations today an-nounced this year's organization and individual winners of the ninth annual Ernest Amory Codman Award to recognize excellence in the use of outcomes meas-urement to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.
The award recipients in the following categories are:
- Behavioral Health Care: Pikes Peak Mental Health Center, Colorado Springs, Colo.
- Disease-Specific Care: Swedish Medical Center, Seattle
- Hospital (two recipients): Memorial Health Center, Medford, Wis., and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Rockville, Md. -- Multi-Organization: The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative, Cincinnati
- Individual: Kenneth W. Kizer, M.D., M.P.H., who is president and chief ex-ecutive officer of the National Quality Forum (NQF).
Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of per-formance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission also recognizes an individual who has played a significant leadership role in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health care services, or who has made major contributions to the development and testing of performance measures or the science and art of quality improvement. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and im-provement selected the six recipients of the 2005 Awards.
"We congratulate the 2005 Codman Award winners for their successful efforts in translating quality measurement and improvement theory into real-world achievements in excellence," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president, Joint Commission. "Their initiatives provide vivid examples of breakthroughs in using performance measurement to improve health care quality and patient safety."
The awards will be formally presented to the winners on Wednesday, Nov. 9, during the Joint Commission and Joint Commission Resources' National Conference on Quality and Patient Safety in Chicago.
The specific achievements of the 2005 Codman Award recipients are:
-- Pikes Peak Mental Health Center addressed the rise in substance abuse among the mentally ill in its community and the limited resources available to treat those individuals. The organization's new approach is based on the recov-ery model and includes establishment of the Recovery House program that provides extended care and intensive care management to clients with a history of chronic alcoholism and homelessness. The program has led to a 27 percent increase in ac-cess to care; an 83 percent increase in capacity for service; a 24 percent in-crease in customer satisfaction; and an almost 23 percent decrease in client re-admission.
-- Swedish Medical Center established a comprehensive program that deploys a coordinated team to assure comprehensive, timely and efficient acute stroke care. In addition to ensuring that stroke patients receive expedited evaluations in less than 45 minutes when warranted, Swedish's Stroke Team also assures that stroke patients will be cared for by staff who have been trained in the latest advances in stroke care and understand their roles and responsibilities on a highly specialized team whose success is dependent on how well the group works together to meet patient goals.
-- Memorial Health Center's initiative resulted in the majority of the or-anization's more than 500 patients with type 2 diabetes being able to successfully control their blood-sugar levels within nationally recommended goal ranges. The organization also became a state leader for adhering to guidelines for the frequency of checking A1c levels, achieving a 95 percent compliance rate compared to the statewide rate of 89 percent. At the same time improvements in care and outcomes were being achieved, Memorial Health Center experienced a dra-matic rise in the number of type 2 diabetes patients who received diabetes self-management education, including medical nutrition therapy by registered dieti-tians.
-- Shady Grove Adventist Hospital relieved emergency department overcrowding, thereby assuring greater community access to care. A patient-flow re-design re-sulted in a 72 percent reduction in hours of ambulance diversions and a decline in the number of patients "boarded" in the emergency department from an average of 190 per month to 120 per month. Once capacity management improvements were implemented, patient satisfaction increased and the length of stay for emergency department patients fell from 397 minutes to 372 minutes. In 2004, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital cared for an average of 7,250 patients per month in its emer-gency department.
-- The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative reduced health-care-acquired infections for patients in the operating room and intensive care units by focusing on evidence-based practices. The effort resulted in a 50 per-cent decrease in central-line infections and increased adherence to evidence-based practices to 95 percent from 30 percent. The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative enlisted 10 hospitals to participate in a two-year, pa-tient-safety collaborative to reduce health-care-acquired infections for pa-tients receiving care in the highest risk areas of acute care. Strategies in-cluded reducing central-line infections by using sterile barriers such as gloves, gowns and full-size bed drapes, and applying antiseptic to the insertion site; reducing surgical site infections by using correct antibiotic timing; and training staff in high-risk units in organizational change methodology. The 10 hospitals participating in the initiative are Bethesda North Hospital, The Christ Hospital, Cincinnati ChildrenâEUR[TM]s Hospital Medical Center, Cincin-nati Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, The Fort Hamilton Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, The Jewish Hospital, Mercy Hospital Mt. Airy, St. Elizabeth Medical Center and The University Hospital.
-- Kenneth W. Kizer, M.D., M.P.H., is a passionate advocate for performance improvement, the public reporting of performance and using measurement as a means to improve the quality of health care. In his role at NQF, he is leading national efforts to establish consensus-based standards for measurement and public reporting of health care performance information that will be meaningful in making determinations about safety and quality. As the Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from 1994 to 1999, Dr. Kizer was the highest ranking physician in the federal government and the chief executive officer of the veterans health care system, where he transformed the manner in which care is delivered and measured in the VA.
Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organi-zations seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including more than 8,200 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 6,800 other health care organizations that provide long term care, assisted living, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. The Joint Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery networks, and other managed care entities. In addition, the Joint Commission provides certification of disease-specific care programs, pri-mary stroke centers, and health care staffing services. An independent, not-for-profit organization, the Joint Commission is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Learn more about the Joint Commission at http://www.jcaho.org.
Health & Medicine Week via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net
October 31, 2005
Malpractice insurance provider gives Virginia doctor patient safety award
The Doctors Company, a physician-owned medical malpractice insurance pro-vider, announce that Sallie S. Cook, MD, of Virginia, has received its Award for the Advancement of Patient Safety.
The award is designed to draw public and industry attention to the impor-tance of patient safety within the medical profession and to recognize physicians who demonstrate leadership in this area.
For more than 15 years, Cook has made a unique contribution to the patient safety movement through her work with the Virginia Health Quality Center (VHQC), a healthcare quality improvement organization and the designated Patient Safety Organization for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Cook is currently the corporate medical officer and senior clinical advisor for quality improvement initiatives at VHQC. She also is immediate past-president of Virginians Improving Patient Care and Safety (VIPC & S), a coalition of more than 40 organizations improving healthcare quality and patient safety. This year she received their Distinguished Leadership in Patient Safety Award. She is currently president-elect of the American Health Quality Associa-tion (AHQA).
Cook joined the VHQC in 1990 after being medical director of the Blood Bank at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) Hospitals. She is board certified in anatomic and clinical pathology and the subspecialty of blood banking. She is an associate clinical professor of pathology in the MCV School of Medicine and is on the board of directors of Virginia Blood Services, Centralized Credentials Verification Services.
Cook earned her MD from the Medical College of Virginia, where she also did her residency training in pathology.
This article was prepared by Health & Medicine Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2005, Health & Medicine Week via NewsRx.com.
U.S. Newswire
October 27, 2005
Joint Commission Seeks Applications for 2006 Ernest Amory Codman Award
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is now ac-cepting applications for the 10th annual Ernest Amory Codman Award. The theme for the special 10th anniversary celebration of the Award is "Advancing the Dream: A Century of Progress, A Decade of Recognition, Excellence for the Millennium." This prestigious award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by organizations and individuals to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.
An application for the 2006 Codman Award is available at:
http://www.jcaho.org/accredited+organizations/codman+award/codman +award.htm for the more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs accredited or certi-fied by the Joint Commission. The deadline for application submission is February 17, 2006. The application is also available by calling the Joint Commis-sion's Customer Service Center at 630.792.5800.
Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of per-formance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. Since 1997, 48 organizations and individuals have re-ceived the Codman Award for excellence in performance measurement. Awards are given only to meritorious applications and are not necessarily presented in each category. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement will select the recipients of the 2006 Awards.
Health care organizations may submit any initiative that reflects the accomplishment of a significant performance improvement. Applicant-organizations must demonstrate an organization-wide commitment and approach to data driven improvement. Joint Commission-accredited health care organizations and certified pro-grams may submit more than one initiative.
The 2006 Codman Awards will be presented during the Joint Commission National Conference on Quality and Patient Safety in November 2006, which will include video presentations of the award-winning initiatives.
The Codman Award takes its origin in the revolutionary concepts of Dr. Codman, who in 1910 proposed a system for physicians and hospitals to track every patient treated to determine whether individual treatments were effective. If a treatment was not effective, an effort would be made to determine why, so that similar cases could be treated successfully in the future. Dr. Codman's "end results" system emphasized the importance of using outcomes measurement for per-formance improvement.
Please call the Joint Commission's Customer Service Center at 630-792-5800, or send an e-mail to tjohnson@jcaho.org for additional information about the Codman Award.
------
Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organi-zations seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health care organiza-tions and programs in the United States, including more than 8,200 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 6,800 other health care organizations that provide long term care, assisted living, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. The Joint Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery networks, and other managed care entities. In addition, the Joint Commission provides certification of disease-specific care programs, pri-mary stroke centers, and health care staffing services. An independent, not- for-profit organization, the Joint Commission is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Learn more about the Joint Commission at http://www.jcaho.org.
NewsRX.com
September 10, 2005
BUYERS HEALTH CARE ACTION GROUP;
Report comparing Minnesota health plan quality released by coalition
A report comparing the quality and efficiency of Minnesota's major health plans was released by the Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG).
Intended to guide employer purchasing and consumer health plan selection, this first-of-its-kind study is based on health plan performance data collected through eValue8, a nationally recognized survey that asks health plans to submit information about their clinical quality and administrative efficiency.
Seven health plans doing business in Minnesota participated in the survey including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, HealthPartners HMO, HealthPart-ners PPO, Patient Choice, Medica HMO, CIGNA PPO and Sioux Falls-based Sioux Val-ley HMO. BHCAG conducted individual meetings with each participating plan to share the results and to identify areas for improvement and collaboration.
"The eValue8 tool measures the steps Minnesota's health plans are taking to adopt electronic medical records, manage chronic diseases, help consumers chose high-performing providers and reward providers who provide high-quality care," explained BHCAG CEO Carolyn Pare. "eValue8 shifts our current health care sys-tem's fee-for-service focus to a pay-for-performance system where doctors and hospitals have strong incentives to improve care, consumers have comparative in-formation to choose high quality doctors and employers voice common expectations to the health care marketplace."
By using eValue8, Pare says employers are able to influence the health care marketplace both locally and nationally by placing a common "purchase order" for clinical specifications that have been proven to stabilize costs and keep quality high.
eValue8 is a national initiative supported by the Washington, DC-based Na-tional Business Coalition on Health. More than 250 health plans in the nation now participate in the survey process and it has been used successfully by 10 employer purchasing coalitions as well as companies like General Motors and Pit-ney Bowes to negotiate pricing, determine employee premiums and collaborate on programs to improve treatment of costly chronic health conditions such as diabe-tes, asthma and cardiovascular disease.
Hundreds of benchmarks are gathered through a rigorous survey that measures a health plan's effectiveness in such areas as information technology, member communication, disease management, measuring provider performance, behavioral health treatment and management of pharmacy costs and safety. For information technology, health plans are asked if the physicians and nurse practitioners within their network have access to portable handheld devices and computer soft-ware to order patient prescriptions and prevent drug conflicts.
Plans must also disclose the sophistication of the information systems they use to process claims and how they communicate claim costs to employers. In the consumer engagement section, health plans submit information on the extent of their member outreach activities such as 24 hour/ 7 day a week nurse advice lines, the type of provider qualifications and performance criteria they list in their consumer catalogs and whether or not they use "push" email technology to educate members about their specific health conditions and the disease manage-ment programs offered to help members control their disease.
Pharmacy management is another important category where plans report on the steps they take to ensure pharmacy safety at the prescribing and patient level, their relationships with pharmacy benefit management firms, how they manage costs through generic equivalent prescriptions and whether or not they have pro-grams to address the fast- growing category of specialty pharmaceuticals that are used in chemotherapy and to treat diseases such as Hepatitis C.
Provider quality incentives, healthy lifestyle promotion, and behavioral health treatment are also part of the eValue8 survey. For example, plans are asked what they do to track and compare performance for both doctors and hospitals and if they partner with other health plans in the community on patient safety programs.
The survey also requires plans to document the extent of their involvement in community health prevention programs on cancer, immunizations, tobacco cessa-tion, weight management, and worksite health promotion. For behavioral health, plans are rated high if they demonstrate a commitment to promote established clinical guidelines and best practices for treating depression and alcohol dis-orders. eValue8 pays close attention to whether plans measure individual pro-vider performance results in behavioral health and the extent of their patient support and education programs.
Minnesota plans compared favorably to the best performing national plan in most of the quality categories. HealthPartners HMO, HealthPartners PPO, Medica and Patient Choice received special national recognition for their performance in three survey categories. HealthPartners HMO and Medica were selected for their success in adopting health information technology while Patient Choice was recognized for its efforts in measuring and publicly reporting individual pro-vider performance.
HealthPartners PPO was also honored for its effectiveness in offering pre-ferred provider plans for specific employer needs. These Minnesota health plans recently shared their strategies at a recent eValue8 best practices national conference held in Chicago, Illinois. One of the first Minnesota employers to include the eValue8 results in their health care purchasing decision-making is the University of Minnesota.
Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG) is an employer health care purchas-ing coalition.
This article was prepared by Healthcare Mergers, Acquisitions & Ventures Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2005, Healthcare Mergers, Acquisitions & Ventures Week via IncRx.com.
Managed Care Weekly Digest
August 1, 2005
MEDICAID; Healthcare quality improvement organization awarded Medicaid contract
The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) awarded Qualis Health a contract to provide analysis and review of two fee-for-service programs that serve Medicaid patients.
The contract includes a care management component assessing inpatient care and a survey method to evaluate patient satisfaction with disease management.
Qualis Health, which has expertise evaluating and improving healthcare services for Medicaid clients in several state patients, will provide care management services through a retrospective utilization management evaluation with Washington State hospitals that serve fee-for- service patients. At the same time, the nonprofit organization will administer a satisfaction survey with Medicaid clients who have enrolled in disease management programs.
Qualis Health will be administering the Consumer Assessment of Health Plan Satisfaction, also referred to as CAHPS. CAHPS refers to a comprehensive and evolving family of survey instruments that are designed to capture the experiences of consumers and patients with a range of healthcare products and services.
For this contract, it will be used in evaluating the satisfaction with disease management programs offered to Medicaid clients with certain chronic diseases. The utilization management evaluation will include the review of the medical necessity of hospital admissions and also assess the correct coding of select Washington state hospital claims.
These services are required by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and allow the state's Medicaid program to assess the adequacy of inpatient care being delivered to Medicaid patients. The results from these programs can assist the Washington state Medicaid program to identify and implement healthcare quality improvement opportunities.
"In winning this contract, Qualis Health brings 26 years of experience evaluating and improving the quality of care for Medicaid beneficiaries," said Jonathan Sugarman, MD, MPH, president and CEO of Qualis Health. "This contract continues our efforts to meet the needs of Medicaid agencies by providing high quality, cost effective review services." Qualis Health is a nonprofit healthcare quality improvement organization.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
July 31, 2005 Sunday
Doing it right - every time; Company aims to raise health care quality
By GUY BOULTON, Staff, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Madison - MetaStar's name is utterly nondescript, but what it does is suddenly fashionable. The non-profit organization, founded more than 30 years ago, is charged by the federal agency that oversees Medicare to help improve the quality of health care in Wisconsin. That gives MetaStar a key role in the so-called quality movement - the push to lessen the widespread variation in how doctors and hospitals care for patients. The effort is still in its infancy but shows signs in many states, including Wisconsin, of finally taking hold.
Chicago Tribune
July 30, 2005 Saturday
Medical error law signed; Secrecy of reports will be protected
By Bruce Japsen, Tribune staff reporter
President Bush Friday signed into law legislation to reduce medical errors by encouraging medical care providers to report mistakes without the risk of the information being used against them in lawsuits.
The law has been on a six-year journey that began when the U.S. health-care system was embarrassed by a landmark 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine that showed as many as 98,000 people die each year as a result of medical errors.
But doctors, hospitals and nurses say a significant hurdle to reporting such errors has been fear that such information would be used against them--leading to abysmal reporting of errors to the government or to non-profit health groups that collect such data.
