Week in Review: Health Care's New IT Girl

Health Care's New IT Girl
Thursday, May 9th

Dear Members and Friends:

If you've been keeping your eyes on the health care headlines, you've noticed that the medical home has been getting a lot of attention lately -- from Capitol Hill to Health Affairs to Brookings -- and we couldn't be more excited about the visibility "our girl's" getting.

Just last week the Alliance for Health Reform hosted a Capitol Hill briefing, where panelists from Harvard University, CMS, and The Commonwealth Fund discussed: "Patient-Centered Medical Homes: Do They Work?" The experts emphasized that the medical home is the essential underpinning of health system transformation, but that the journey will require patience and dedication to change and improvement.

In a new Health Affairs blog, Dr. David Keller urges clinicians to not forget patients during their medical home journey, and emphasizes: "Health information technology is a really useful tool, but it will not bring us to the promised land unless we use it to enhance our relationships with patient and families."

I encourage you to read on, enjoy our eHealth month features, and mark your calendar for our care coordination webinar on May 16th, and our Monthly Briefing on May 30th with RAND's Dr. Art Kellermann.

Sincerely,

Marci Nielsen, PhD, MPH
Chief Executive Officer

Cincinnati's eHealth Trifecta:
Medical Home, Meaningful Use, and HIE

Greater Cincinnati put together an inspiring video about the impact of health care innovations, such as medical home, meaningful use, and health information exchange. The payoff has been rewarding for both clinicians, staff, and patients, particularly those with diabetes and asthma.

Greater Cincinnati's Medical Home video.

A Perfect Pair:
Health IT and Value-Based Insurance Design

A new brief from the University of Michigan's Center for Value-Based Insurance Design highlights the alignment of eHealth and Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID). V-BID is an innovative approach that aligns consumer incentives with value by reducing barriers to high-value health services and providers, and discouraging the use of low-value health services and providers. This 'carrot' and 'stick' model has been shown to improve health care quality and control spending growth, recognizing that medical services diﬀer in the beneﬁts they provide; and the benefit of a specific service depends on the user (health status, social determinants, behaviors, etc.).

Read more about the alignment of eHealth and V-BID.

Upcoming Events
Webinars, Seminars, and Knowledge Sharing

Advocacy & Public Policy Center: Cabinet Call
May 9 | PCPCC

A Close Look at Care Coordination within Patient-Centered Medical Homes
May 9 | AHRQ Innovations Exchange

Creating Cultures of Caring: Enhancing Health and Safety in the Workplace and the Larger Community May 9 | SAMHSA

Building Connections: Championing Collaboration in Healthcare May 9 | Health Federation of Philadelphia

States Prepare for the Newly Insured: A Conversation about Mental Health and Substance Abuse Needs May 13 | NASHP State Refor(u)m

Outcomes & Evaluation Center: Cabinet Call
May 15 | PCPCC

More events.

Spending Slowdown
May Be Here to Stay

Two new studies in the latest Health Affairs assert that the country’s slowest health spending growth rates in 50 years may be attributed to factors besides the economic downturn, including structural changes.

The first study examined the impact of job loss and insurance benefits; and the second study found that national health spending between 2003 and 2012 ended up being 16 percent or $514 billion below the level predicted by CMS. They suggest more than half of spending was due to a number of structural changes, including greater provider efficiency. Authors are optimistic that the slowdown will continue, and could possibly be $770 billion less than predicted over the next 10 years.

This month...
We're all about Health IT

Meeting Patients Where They Are: A Medical Home Model for High-Risk Patients
Thursday, May 16th, 12PM - 1:30 PM ET
This webinar will highlight a medical home model that uses advanced health IT to provide team-based primary care for over 3,000 high-risk, elderly patients in assisted living and group home facilities.

May National Briefing
Thursday, May 30th, 11AM - Noon ET
Dr. Art Kellermann of the RAND Corporation will discuss findings from his January 2013 Health Affairs article What It Will Take to Achieve the As-Yet-Unfulfilled Promises of Health IT.

Medical Home Headlines