 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overview | Agenda | Workshops | Exhibitors | Sponsorship Opportunities
Medical Directors can play an important role in promoting the quality agenda, and Group Insurance Commission Executive Director, Dolores L. Mitchell aims to solicit their participation in a broad campaign to make American medicine as good as it can be. Mitchell will moderate the Consortium's HealthMart 2003 panel on "Making the Business Case for Quality Improvement: Medical Director's Perspective." "I would hope we will draw from the medical directors a frank assessment of the barriers they face in trying to effect changes in practice patterns among their physicians and their suggestions on how all of the medical directors could facilitate the process of change," she said. Panelist Philip R. Boulter, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Tufts Health Plan, said that continuing to focus on quality improvement as a fundamental premise of controlling medical cost and improving health care is a leadership challenge that must be accepted by all. "In many aspects, quality improvement can only occur in an atmosphere of collaboration both between competing health plans, physicians and hospitals as well as other stakeholders," he said. The power of collaboration to focus on quality improvement andpatient safety is clearly demonstrated through aspects of the Leapfrog Group's criteria, said Dr. Boulter. The panel also will include James Fanale, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Annette Hanson, MD, Medical Director of the Division of Medical Assistance (Medicaid) and Thomas H. Lee, MD, Medical Director of Partners Community Healthcare. Dr. Lee sees promise in efforts to reward providers for quality improvement. "There are not a lot of ideas with long-term promise besides trying to reward physicians for adopting systems that reduce errors," he said. "Thus, I think employers, payers, and providers are increasingly finding that their interests are in alignment in this one philosophical way." Dr. Lee pointed to Bridges to Excellence and pay-for-performance contracts as examples of financial incentives that reward providers for adopting error-reducing systems -- and punishing those who do not. "I endorse a broader definition of quality that focuses on reduction in errors, including errors of underuse, overuse, and misuse," he said. Because physicians are human beings who are functioning at about their limits, they need to use systems such as computerized prescribing in order to reduce their errors, according to Dr. Lee. The same systems that are likely to improve the reliability with which physicians prescribe a needed drug are able to steer them toward a safe and cost-effective choice. Dr. Fanale said that improved quality can reduce costs. "Examples include proper medications after heart attacks, appropriate medical treatment of congestive heart failure and early diagnosis of breast and cervical cancer," he said. "These 'preventive' measures clearly improve quality and impact the cost equation." Dr. Boulter noted that quality improvement often results in a return on investment; although it may take a longer period of time than typical returns on investment. "However, quality improvement can and typically does increase productivity for employers in the work place by decreasing absenteeism and 'presenteeism', that is, being at work but functioning at diminished levels", he said. "Also quality improvement will systematically help approach the problem of preventing medical errors and is a critical component of quality in our health care system."
|
| |
|
