2004 HealthMart Conference - Session 4 Description
"Crossing the Quality Chasm: How do we get there from here?"
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Session 4 Description
"Best Practices / Performance Measures"
Putting Best Practices to Work |
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In terms of quality, the health care industry's culture is "moving away from shame and blame and toward error prevention and a focus on best practices," according to John A. Fromson, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs for the Massachusetts Medical Society.
As moderator of a panel discussion of "Best Practices/Performance Measures" during the Consortium's 2004 HealthMart Conference, "Crossing the Quality Chasm: How do we get there from here?" on Friday, October 29, at the Westin Copley Place, Dr. Fromson will focus on "what has really worked in terms of developing performance measures and having a direct impact on care."
Joining Dr. Fromson on the panel will be Roberta Herman, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, discussing chronic disease; Patrick O'Reilly, PhD, Program Director, Nursing Home Quality Initiative, for MassPRO, discussing long-term care; and Elizabeth Childs, MD, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, discussing mental/behavioral health
MassPRO is the Quality Improvement Organization in Massachusetts and under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), formerly known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), in its mission to improve health care quality of Medicare beneficiaries.
"One of the areas of CMS focus is changing the culture of the nursing home world, from being task focused to providing person-centered care." said Dr. O'Reilly.
This raises the question of whether change should be driven by data or vice versa, with improvement in care resulting in better measures, said Dr. O'Reilly.
"The classic way most of us look at care is not just by quality measures, but by observing person-centered care," he said, acknowledging that it is a challenge to measure such care.
In a nursing home, one way to look at quality is through staff changeover, which can run from 40 percent to 100 percent, said Dr. O'Reilly. Making the workplace more amenable to the residents and staff could achieve a transformational change into the future.
The approach MassPRO uses is to embed quality improvement principles in a review of specific clinical systems rather than teaching staff the principles in the abstract, according to Dr. O'Reilly. He said that these systems are set out in a very clear series of logical steps, and nursing homes are provided the tools to implement those steps and shown how to monitor performance.
Dr. Childs said that behavioral health outcome measures are being collected and considered statewide for the first time. She will discuss the effort to incorporate best practices into clinical practice, establishing standardized methods.
As with nursing homes, vendors in the mental/behavioral health care field have large staff turnover, she said.
"Everybody understands the need to provide quality services, but more providers need to have formal programs of quality improvement," said Dr. Childs. "It's important to have data to learn what is and what is not working. A culture of non-blame is important for workplace development."
Dr. Herman said that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care relies predominantly on standard HEDIS measures to determine the quality of chronic care. The focus is typically on process or intermediate outcome measures, for example, the proportion of diabetics with HbA1c under control.
"Direct-to-member strategies and the right provider supports and incentives make a very powerful combination," said Dr. Herman.
If you would like additional information on sponsorship opportunities for this or other events, please contact Arleen Coletti, Director of Member & Exhibiting Services via e-mail or by phone 781-768-2512.
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