“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.”
- William Pollard (Entrepreneur)

At MN Community Measurement, we’re helping to shape and influence the changes that are leading to greater transparency in the health care industry. As the movement towards consumer-focused health care grows, new opportunities for collaboration are rising with national organizations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Our participation as a pilot site for two national projects - RWJF’s Regional Market Pilot and AQA’s Regional Pilot – supports our efforts to expand our set of measures to include patient experience and additional measures. The RWJF project will also focus on engaging the consumer in health care quality information while the AQA project will allow us to integrate Medicare FFS members into our measures and to include measures of cost and resource use. Our participation in these collaborations can help us expand our resources, develop new methods of reporting, and share our experience with others. This growth and change brings us closer to our goals of improving health in Minnesota and becoming a national model for public reporting of health care quality.


Sincerely,



Jim Chase
Executive Director

MNCM recently submitted a proposal to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to participate in their Regional Market Quality Pilot program. These pilots are meant to encourage communities to expand public reporting, support provider quality improvement, and increase consumer engagement in the use of health care quality information. The Minnesota proposal was developed with the support of the Institute of Clinical Systems Improvement, Stratis Health, the Minnesota Medical Association, the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the Buyers Health Care Action Group, community health centers, and consumers.

The proposed program would:
• expand the MNCM measures to include a patient experience survey and pilot the direct submission of data from medical groups;
• investigate what health care information consumers find most useful, revise our public reporting to meet those needs, and develop other actions to engage consumers in improving their care;
• develop a patient activation process that will help medical groups motivate patients to take a more active role in the quality of their health care;
• bring together community leaders to find way new ways to align our efforts in quality improvement and accelerate the impact of this work on the health care system.

As part of this process, the RWJF also plans to bring together leading organizations in public reporting and quality improvement from around the country to share ideas and discuss results. The pilots are expected to begin as early as July of this year.

AMBULATORY CARE QUALITY ALLIANCE (AQA) REGIONAL PILOTS

MNCM participated in the first meeting of the six AQA pilot sites on May 10th in Washington D.C. This program, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), will support expansion of our measures to the 26 AQA measures, fund the data collection for a patient experience survey, support the development of cost measures, and include the integration of Medicare fee-for-service data into our reporting process. CMS hopes this effort will create a national template for performance measurement and public reporting and be used as the basis for performance payment programs for Medicare. Our initial plans are to include Medicare fee-for-service data in one or more of our administrative measures this year and expand to other measures for our 2007 Health Care Quality Report.
 

MNCM TO BE SURVEYED BY NCQA ON NEW QUALITY PLUS PROGRAM – Physician and Hospital Quality (PHQ) Standards

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently announced that 48 health plans “have committed to measure the quality and cost of care provided by their network physicians and hospitals and to be evaluated on how well they communicate the results to their customers.” Three Minnesota health plans are among the Early Adopters: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, HealthPartners, and Medica. MNCM is proud to be one of two measurement collaboratives in the nation to also step forward and be surveyed under the new Physician and Hospital Quality standards.

To meet these new PHQ standards, health plans will demonstrate they measure the quality and cost of network providers through the use of clinical measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA). Because MNCM serves as the data aggregator for medical group level clinical quality measures in Minnesota, we have volunteered to be surveyed on the collaborative elements of the PHQ standards to support participating health plans in achieving this additional level of accreditation. We expect to be reviewed by NCQA in early 2007. Having a significant role in the Physician and Hospital Quality Standards will further establish MNCM as the community resource for medical group level clinical quality information.

For further information on NCQA’s Quality Plus Program, see the NCQA Web site at www.ncqa.org.

 

BRIDGES TO EXCELLENCE (BTE) UPDATE

MNCM has just completed the analysis for the 2006 Minnesota Bridges to Excellence process sponsored by the Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG). Eight employers with almost 200,000 employees and dependents have been included in the analysis this year. Nine medical groups that have met the BTE thresholds for the 2005 Optimal Diabetes Care composite measure will be recognized in June 2006. BHCAG plans a public announcement of the results later this month and work will begin shortly to expand the program to additional measures and employers for 2007.

MNCM STAFF UPDATES

Cynthia MacDonald, Senior Program Executive for MN Community Measurement, has accepted a new senior management position as the Director of Government Programs for Metropolitan Health Plan (MHP). In her new role, she will be responsible for the Medicaid and Medicare programs of the Hennepin County-based health plan. Cynthia has been a great asset to MNCM over the past year and we look forward to working with her in her new role at MHP.


 

MN Community Measurement
Court International Building
2550 University Avenue West
Suite 245 N
St. Paul, MN 55114
Telephone: (651) 209-0390
Fax:  (651) 209-0394
www.mnhealthcare.org

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