Posted on 28. Feb, 2010 by cyndynayer in Press Releases
Looking Back… and Ahead
Although the ADVANCE for Health Information Executives magazine and website have come to an end, we look forward to taking our next step in reaching an elite group of healthcare executives. First, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude to each person we’ve had the pleasure of interacting with over the years in the HIT market. Whether you were a devoted reader or dedicated contributor, we appreciate you bringing ADVANCE into your life. You helped us build a powerful community of HIT professionals and become the defining voice for healthcare IT executives everywhere. And for that, we thank you!
Our new print and online product, Executive Insight: Strategies and solutions for healthcare leaders, will provide in-depth analysis and strategic planning solutions for healthcare leaders to respond, adapt and thrive in today’s rapidly changing environment. Through our exclusive webinars, interactive online community, multimedia and cutting-edge content, healthcare executives will have the opportunity to engage with one another and implement forward-thinking strategies to lead their facilities to success.
This new quarterly print magazine and robust website are slated for a fall 2010 debut, so stay tuned as
we release more details leading up to the big launch.
Burton-Advance for Health Information Exec
“’Tis a sordid profit that’s accompanied by the destruction of Health.” –Bernardino Ramazzini,
Treatise on the Diseases of Tradesmen, 1705
By Karen O’Hara
Amovement is afoot to get more occupational health programs and modestly sized companies to embrace workplace health and productivity management (HPM) initiatives that have been the domain of larger corporations. When appropriately applied, proponents say HPM significantly expands the net cast by occupational medicine practitioners, who are population-health oriented.
The objective is to extend outreach from individual employees, to groups of workers, to the community at large – somewhat analogous to the circles that radiate from a pebble dropped in a pond. “I would hope an occupational medicine program would offer health and productivity management services to the employers they serve and to their community,” said Doug Benner, M.D., occupational health coordinator for Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, where he works closely with Kaiser’s group health plan. “Many people in our field feel you can’t do this just at the worksite. You have to make the whole community healthy. You can’t fix the employees if you have an unhealthy workplace or if the whole community is not health focused.” Pamela Hymel, M.D., M.P.H., president of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), corroborates Dr. Benner’s view. “A healthy workplace, workforce and community are vital to the long-term financial stability of the country,” she said. “The U.S. has far underestimated the impact of poor health in the workplace and on the economy. As we look at our gross domestic product and how much we spend on health care, it’s important for us to determine how we can provide greater efficiency and not have to treat so many chronic and end-stage diseases. “We can’t just look at insurance coverage. We need to look at how we can increase the baseline health of the population. . . .
Burton Visions continues here. . .
Wayne Burton and Cyndy Nayer, from the Center for Health Value Innovation, speak with David Harlow about value-based health designs for health improvement and cost savings
I recently spoke with Wayne Burton, MD and Cyndy Nayer. Cyndy is co-founder and President of the Center for Health Value Innovation; Wayne is a member of the Board of Strategic Advisors, and former longtime Corporate Medical Director of JP Morgan Chase. The Center focuses on sharing evidence of improved health and economic outcomes through value-based designs. In the current environment, this sort of private-sector focus on value-based health improvement and cost savings is critical.
Given the recent collapse of health reform inside the Beltway, now is the time for organizations such as the Center to prove themselves and their approaches, by demonstrating that they are able to “bend the cost curve” while improving health indicators, and ensure that efforts to do so yield a significant ROI. Wayne and Cyndy shared with me a number of ways in which programs run by large employers in the public and private sectors are a step ahead of the health care systems in place for other folks. Here’s one excerpt from our conversation:
No one succeeds in a value based design without two things. One, an incredible focus on prevention and wellness, an expectation that people will take care of their health. And the second is consistent and ongoing communication. We have several instances where companies thought if they announced a value based design during benefits enrollment people would dive on to it. And within eighteen months they had left the value based design space because it’s a complicated message and it takes a while for people to understand what exactly we want them to do. Value based design is not just about moving copays to zero for a drug. It really is about teaching people what part of the highway do we want them to travel on. How do we help them get to their destination, healthier, higher performing, more productive and that’s what the levers are about. Think of them as cones on the highway, and as we fix the highway or encounter new bumps we move the cones around to get the cars to move a different direction – that’s exactly what a lever does.
For more on the topic, check out the many articles posted on the Center’s website.
Burton-Nayer Blog w/Harlow
David Harlow continues the value-based design conversation with Wayne Burton, MD and Cyndy Nayer of the Center for Health Value Innovation
Today we bring you Part II of my conversation with Wayne Burton and Cyndy Nayer of the Center for Health Innovation, where we get into some specific examples of successful programs. The Center represents over 40 million lives, and brings together employers and providers to focus on a limited number of levers targeted at health and wellness – rather than health care. The ROI of wellness efforts in the workplace is pegged at nearly 300% in a recent Health Affairs article by Karen Baicker et al. and accompanying Health Affairs blog post by Jaan Sidorov – one of my fellow “Health Wonks.” Clearly this is an area that demands our attention.
Burton-Nayer Blog Part II w/Harlow
Tags: Advance, Burton, JPMorgan Chase, Nayer, Wayne
