Bundles on WIHI

Madge Kaplan writes:

The next WIHI broadcast — Bundles and Buy-In for Value-Based Care — will take place on Thursday, March 12, from 2 to 3 PM ET, and I hope you'll tune in.

Our guests will include:

• Mark P. Jarrett, MD, MBA, Chief Quality Officer, Sr. Vice President & Associate Chief Medical Officer, North Shore-LIJ Health System
• Susan Browning, MPH, FACHE, Vice President, Neurosciences, Head & Neck Surgery/ENT and Ophthalmology, North Shore-LIJ Health System
• Katharine Luther, RN, MPM, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Mark Hiller, MBA, Vice President for Innovative Solutions & Leader, Premier Bundled Payment Collaborative, Premier
• Alice Ehresman, RN, Healthcare Quality Specialist, Baystate Health

There’s no question that public and private payers in the US are moving toward more global payment arrangements with health care providers. But the picture of how health care delivery systems take up the challenge is still coming into focus. Forming or becoming part of an accountable care organization (ACO) has been one dominant response. And a growing number of health care organizations are redesigning common patient care procedures in order to enter into agreements that reward value over volume, and that tie payment to successful deployment of specific bundles of care.

It’s tempting to think of all this rejiggering as resting heavily on a hospital’s or office practice’s CFO or whoever draws up contracts with payers. But there’s so much more to it. That’s why we’ve assembled a terrific panel for the March 12, 2015 WIHI: Bundles and Buy-In for Value-Based Care. Our guests from North Shore-LIJ Health System and Baystate Health are in the thick of matching necessary staffing and cross-continuum teams to newer global payment arrangements for joint replacement, coronary bypass surgery, and stroke care. Baystate’s Alice Ehresman is working full time on operationalizing the care associated with bundled payments. NS-LIJ’s Dr. Mark Jarrett will keep our focus on the culture change required because, while the new processes may be better for patients, providers often find them challenging to adjust to. This can cause some resistance as NS-LIJ’s Susan Browning recently wrote about in a Health Affairs blog post.

We are fortunate to be able to get up close to this issue and to identify some challenges and opportunities all organizations are facing. That’s where Premier’s Mark Hiller comes and IHI’s own Katharine Luther come in. They’re both harnessing learning about global payment implementation from across the country so that everyone benefits.

So, are your care teams ready for value-based payments? Does everyone understand the relationship between better patient care and potential savings? Are there some new skill sets and mindsets required of doctors and nurses and support staff that need to be called out and called for, rather than just taking everyone’s buy-in and readiness for granted? We’re going to dig into all of this and more on the March 12 WIHI.

You can enroll for the broadcast here. We'd also appreciate it if you would spread the word about the show via Twitter.