Center for Better Health
Our Experience
Increasing Quality while Decreasing Costs: A Scalable Approach for Hospital Acquired Conditions
Health Care Challenge
Hospitals are unique environments where individuals require around the clock health management and treatment to facilitate healing. These environments and the care processes occurring within can expose patients to additional complicating health conditions (infection, pneumonia, coma…). The government defines HACs as; (1) high cost, high volume, or both; (2) identified through ICD-9-CM coding as a complicating condition (CC) or major complicating condition (MCC) that, when present as a secondary diagnosis at discharge, results in payment at a higher MS-DRG; and (3) reasonably preventable through application of evidence-based guidelines.”- In 2005 the federal government placed financial responsibility for these “Hospital Acquired Conditions” [HAC] squarely with the provider. Hospital leadership must develop their approach for preventing HAC that fit, or transform, their facility, care practices, and organizational capabilities or face reduced reimbursements.
A detailed description of the project is available from the National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine’s “Systems Engineering to Improve Traumatic Brain Injury Care in the Military Health System Workshop Summary”; chapter 5 Case Study: Insights from Vanderbilt’s Journey Toward System-Supported Practice (53-62)
Aligning to What Patients Value: Re-Designing Care Delivery for Diabetes Patients
Health Care Challenge
The US Health Care model consists of a complex landscape of rigid silos of stakeholders – Hospitals, Clinics, Employers, Payers, Clinicians, Drug Stores, Nursing Homes, Medical Device Companies, etc. Patients must negotiate this landscape to integrate the care they desire. With ever increasing shifts of risk and costs to individuals, this landscape will change. Health care organizations must understanding what will drive these changes and then optimize patient value through specific services.
Compelling Stakeholders to Cooperate: Collaboratively Developing a Multi-Organization Competency Framework
Health Care Challenge
The health care industry, with its professions based educational paths, licensing organizations, and practice reimbursement models, embeds fragmented approaches into the logic and methods for providing care. These embedded models, language, and biases, can create unintended friction between professions through no fault of any individual or organization. Substantial effort is excreted by health care organizations in aligning professionals to overcome this friction and approach care through an effective team based approach.
Based on a dialog led by the Executive Sponsor, the session was viewed as a success by all participants.
Please visit the AMIA website for more information. http://www.amia.org/
Increasing Opportunity while Reducing Risks in Business Plans: Reducing Business Development Investment Risk for a FORTUNE 100 Company
Health Care Challenge
The current health care environment is being driven by rapid developments in basic science, clinical care, information science, imaging, diagnostics, drugs, medical devices, payment models, government regulation, and third party certification. This shifting landscape makes forecasting risk associated with business and investment decisions difficult of organizations. In reality, most organizations rely on analyst reports, contracting with individual Subject Matter Experts, and/or consulting firm recommendations. Essentially organization’s judge the risks using the logic of the professionals they hire and thus solidify their own knowledge limitations into decisions. What leading organizations need is an iterative process that drives simultaneous cycles of education, testing, and plan refinement and confidence.
Reducing Cost & Time to Benefit from IT: Accelerating Development of Common & Unique Capabilities for Personal Health Records
Health Care Challenge
Studies show the US Health Care system spends 80-90% of all funds on medical care, and the remaining portion on what is currently defined as public health. The resulting system is optimized to support a rescue mentality, verses health management. Enabling health management will require shifts in how individuals engage with the health care system and the information those engagements produce.
