Partnering with Business Coalitions: A Primer for QIOs

1. Partnering with Business Coalitions: A Primer for QIOs Marc H. Bennett CEO, HealthInsight

2. HealthInsight’s qualifications on this subject • Utah Business Health Partnership in the 1990s • Long hx of partnership with two Business Coalitions in NV • Data analysis contract with the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH)

3. The Healthcare Challenge from the Perspective of Business Coalitions • United States has the Highest per capita spending on healthcare • Costs are rising too fast to stay competitive • Wide geographic variations are visible in both care costs and quality • Don’t know how to assess quality so . . . • Don’t know whether they are getting value

4. Variations in Quality

5. Variations in Care

6. Businesses care about quality, but in the end it all comes back to cost . . . and that system is broken.

7. The Tribal Wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on for Generations says….. • When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. • A wise and prudent thing to do . . . Attributed to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

8. HOWEVER, in healthcare, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: • Buying a stronger whip • Changing riders • Appointing a committee to study the horse • Arranging visits to see how others ride horses • Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included • Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position Attributed to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

9. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse • Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed • Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse’s performance • Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and, therefore, contributes substantially more to the bottom line than do some other horses • Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses • Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired Attributed to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

10. And one more thing . . . most coalitions have no money, at least at first.

11. How can QIOs work with Coalitions? • Get them to use the Medicare public data • Leverage coalition access to and clout with providers in recruiting and in focusing leadership attention • Improvement projects in high cost, priority areas

12. Questions? Comments? Marc H. Bennett President & CEO, HealthInsight mbennett@healthinsight.org 702-385-9933