New partnership to advance primary care "Measures That Matter"
By VCHI Staff
Richmond, Virginia – July 15, 2020 – Today, the Virginia Center for Health Innovation (VCHI) announced the creation of a new partnership with the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care and the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation to develop, test and advance primary care “Measures That Matter” in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The initiative aims to better align assessment and payment policies with the aspects of care that patients and clinicians know to be valuable, as well as to reduce burden and burnout associated with the proliferation of disease-specific quality measurement across healthcare. The goals of Measures That Matter are in concert with VCHI’s Health Value Dashboard and years of work to accelerate value-driven models of health care in Virginia.
The Virginia Center for Health Innovation will partner with leading experts, including partners from Virginia Health Information and the research team at The Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care (http://www.professionalismandvalue.org/), to both replicate and build on previous research demonstrating the association between physician continuity with lower cost and hospitalizations and to implement a dissemination strategy to assure adoption of the continuity measure(s) by payer and provider organizations. VCHI will utilize Virginia’s All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) to examine the relationship between continuity of care (Continuity) and hospitalizations, total costs, and low-value care delivery and spending. Continuity is defined as the amount of patient encounters that are concentrated among physicians. According to the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care, “well-designed and supported primary care is an important source of improved outcomes in high performing health systems even though it may produce lower disease-based clinical quality measures. This has been called the Paradox of Primary Care. This does not mean that clinical quality measures or payment schemes that use them are bad, but it does suggest a need for better alignment between measures that matter and providing sufficient resources to address them.”
“This new partnership with ABFM-F and The Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care is a natural extension of the work we are already doing through our Value Dashboard and we are thrilled to help build on the work of the Measures That Matter initiative”. – Beth Bortz, President & CEO, Virginia Center for Health Innovation
VCHI began working on measure alignment and tracking Virginia’s provision of low-value health care beginning in 2013 through its partnership with Virginia Health Information (VHI) and Milliman MedInsight, using claims data from Virginia’s All Payer Claims Database and the Health Waste Calculator tool. VCHI’s President and CEO Beth Bortz explained, “this new partnership with ABFM-F and The Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care is a natural extension of the work we are already doing through our Value Dashboard and we are thrilled to help build on the work of the Measures That Matter initiative”.
The work will take place over two years, culminating with the dissemination of results through reports, presentations and conferences along with a plan for next steps. The project is funded through a grant from the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation.
About the Virginia Center for Health Innovation
Incorporated in January 2012 following a recommendation from Gov. Robert McDonnell’s Virginia Health Reform Initiative, the Virginia Center for Health Innovation (VCHI) seeks to facilitate innovation by convening key stakeholders and securing the resources to accelerate value-driven models of wellness and health care throughout Virginia. VCHI’s work is focused on achieving three aims: reducing low-value health care, increasing high-value health care, and ensuring Virginia has the infrastructure in place to measure and reward value in health care. Among its many innovative projects, the most notable for their alignment with this initiative are the Virginia Health Value Dashboard and the Virginia Scorecards on Payment Reform. For more information visit: www.vahealthinnovation.org and follow on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
About the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care: Health care in the United States is going through stormy changes that threaten health professionals’ wellbeing and the public’s trust. The ways in which health care professionals are currently measured and valued often work against the behaviors and relationships that patients want and expect from their providers. The Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care (CPV) aims to study relationships between professionalism and value, promote their alignment, recommend ways to reduce burden, and better support outcome and quality improvement.
Contact:
Beth A. Bortz
President and CEO
Virginia Center for Health Innovation
bbortz@vahealthinnovation.org