September 21, 2010
Mayo Clinic committed to advancing high-value care
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed the nation’s health care landscape. As Mayo Clinic continues to prepare for the new environment, we remain steadfast in our mission of delivering high-value, patient-centered care. As it did during the legislative process, the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center will continue to convene health care thought leaders and patients, offer expertise and knowledge to policy makers, and advocate for policies and regulations that promote the principles of high-value, cost-effective and coordinated patient care.
The ACA includes provisions that promote paying for value in health care, which we define as outcomes, safety and service divided by cost over time. These provisions are good, first steps to begin efforts to advance high-value health care. However, we believe much more needs to be done. In this effort, we are committed to working with you and other stakeholders to ensure that the ACA is implemented consistent with our four principles of high-value care, coordinated care, payment reform and insurance for all.
Specifically, we will offer our ideas and expertise to rapidly diffuse best practices in the following areas:
- High-Value Care: Ideas that improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, and decrease medical costs and waste;
- Coordinated Care: How best to use IT and other tools to promote health care delivery integration; and
- Payment Reform: Change the ways providers are paid in order to incent value in health care.
In this periodic communication, we intend to highlight care and payment models both within and outside of the new law’s provisions to improve value, access and excellence in patient care for all Americans.
Patient-focused care models highlighted on HHS Secretary visit
This summer, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius visited Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN and observed several patient-focused health care models that Mayo employs to ensure affordable, quality care for its patients.
“Initiatives like the Beacon Community Health IT pilot project, and Mayo’s coordinated care model to bring down costs and improve health, show providers across the country what is possible. The Affordable Care Act will help to spread high-quality, low-cost models like these throughout the country to create the kind of quality, cost-effective health system that every American deserves,” said Sebelius.
Featured below is more information about programs highlighted during Secretary Sebelius’ visit.
Studies to develop best practices of health information technology
Mayo Clinic will participate in two HHS funded projects that will develop and test delivery models designed to promote the use of Health Information Technology (HIT) to improve patient care.
The first project is a collaboration between Mayo Clinic and several Southeastern Minnesota organizations to demonstrate how HIT can help providers develop innovative care models that lead to sustainable and measurable health and efficiency improvements. The collaborative, one of 17 projects awarded a grant from HHS’ Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program, will bring together organizations in an 11-county region of Southeast Minnesota to adopt meaningful-use HIT standards to securely exchange information on diabetes and childhood asthma. In addition to Mayo Clinic, the collaborative includes other area doctors and hospitals, public health departments, the Bureau of Prisons, Veteran’s Administration Clinic and the Prairie Island Indian Reservation.
The second project, funded by HHS’ Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program, will research and advance methods for using electronic medical records (EMRs) for medical research, while also maintaining privacy and security. Specifically, the project will:
- Create a framework of open-source services that dynamically configure to transform EHR data into information that is comparable and conforms to standards for large-scale analysis, inference and integration;
- Apply these services in medical centers and population-based settings; and
- Examine data quality and repair strategies.
We will provide updates on these projects as they move forward.
Austin, Minnesota [pop. 22,000] model for patient centered medical home
In 2009, Austin Medical Center and Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation began a project in the Southern Minnesota city of Austin to develop a Patient-Centered Medical Home model that will ultimately serve as a model of patient-centered medical home care for the United States.
The medical home concept brings together schools, churches, employers, hospitals and other local groups to better care for and prevent chronic diseases like diabetes and heart failure. With a population of 22,000 people, including 13 percent seniors and 15 percent Hispanic, the demographics of the Southern Minnesota community mirrors many small American cities across the U.S.
The goal of the project is to improve the experience and health of the individual, improve the overall health of the community and reduce the per capita costs of providing healthcare.
2010 Symposium: Achieving the Vision — Advancing High-Value Health Care
You are invited to join the conversation and help define the next steps to advance high-value health care delivery in America by attending the 2010 Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center Symposium, “Achieving the Vision: Advancing High-Value Health Care.” The event is being held Dec. 5-7, 2010, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, MD.
With passage of the new health care law, the stage is set to define the next steps necessary to advance high-value health care delivery in America. The symposium will determine key priorities to further the evolution to a high-value health system. The purpose of the symposium is to:
- Identify and prioritize the most critical issues in the next one to three years to ensure that patient-centered high-value health care delivery practices thrive and spread.
- Formulate recommendations for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center by reviewing concrete examples of innovative health care delivery projects that improve outcomes and reduce costs.
- Identify and prioritize key issues that will require attention in future phases of health care reform.
Join with other national leaders to build consensus on the future of high-value health care delivery. Nationally recognized health care experts will facilitate discussions at this highly participatory event. Your experiences and ideas will influence future priorities.
Register online and watch the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center Health Policy Blog for updates on speakers and panelists.
This perspective is written by Jeffrey O. Korsmo, Executive Director, Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center; and Bruce Kelly, Director of Government Relations, Mayo Clinic. For more information about the issues or projects discussed in this publication, please contact Randy Schubring at schubring.randy@mayo.edu.