WCHQ – News & Views Winter 2010

From the President & CEO...
Looking ahead — the era of patient experience to begin

Chris Queram,
President and CEO

The importance of the patient voice as a source of comparative performance measures is setting the stage for WCHQ to move more broadly into that area of measurement. This represents a new dimension in our work, as our measures have been around conditions or procedures, focusing on patient care but not necessarily the patient.

WCHQ’s involvement in the patient experience pilot project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through Aligning Forces for Quality is beginning to move us in a very different direction. The patient experience tools being developed are very different from what we have known in the past as patient satisfaction surveys.

WCHQ welcomes new Chief Quality Officer

With the enactment of healthcare reform, performance measurement is now an organizational imperative. It is the foundation on which all efforts to improve care, change reimbursement, reduce costs and engage consumers will be based. Further, the reform legislation places an emphasis on new models of care delivery that foster closer relationships between physicians and hospitals. “For these reasons, the WCHQ and the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA) felt the time was right to create a senior-level position tasked with the responsibility to identify and pursue greater integration between the leading edge measurement work of both organizations,” according to Chris Queram, WCHQ’s president and CEO.

On behalf of the WCHQ Board of Directors and staff, wishing you a joyful holiday season and all the best in the new year.
Happy 2011!

The Analyst’s Perspective
Exploring resource use reporting

Matt Gigot
Project Analyst

In the last installment of the Analyst’s Perspective, I discussed the aggregate improvement observed in the ever-expanding portfolio of ambulatory care performance measures that WCHQ member organizations have diligently reported since 2003. While these efforts are impressive and deserve much praise, the measurement of performance in ambulatory care only represents half of WCHQ’s overarching goal, which is to improve both the quality and cost-effectiveness of care in the state of Wisconsin.

Member Spotlight
Marshfield Clinic

What has been Marshfield Clinic’s experience with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Physician Group Practice (PGP) demonstration project – and what are their results? Theodore Praxel, MD, medical director quality improvement and care management and Marilyn Follen, MSN, RN administrator, quality improvement and care management, shared their insights during a presentation at the WCHQ Assembly Meeting on November 9, 2010

What our readers are saying

After the Fall edition of the News & Views newsletter, we invited our readers to share with us their opinions about the newsletter. Our goal is to use your comments, feedback and suggestions to improve the newsletter. We want to create a newsletter that suits your needs. We have also analyzed the internal “opens and clicks” data available from the vendor we use to distribute the newsletter. Here’s what we learned.