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Greetings!
There was a lot of interesting happenings this past week. Most of the buzz is about the election and the changes that may (or may not?) be in the wind with a Republican majority in the House. I will leave that for the Sunday morning news talk shows to discuss, however.
I think that the real news will be the impact on health care that will come from a log-jammed legislature and a President with veto power. This will put provider groups (physicians and hospitals) in a quandary as they try to figure out insurance exchanges, ACOs, and funding for physician services.
The self-funded employer with a workplace health program will simply continue to give good service and reap the benefits that go with a healthy work force, which has access to medical care when needed. We will focus on the decisiveness that has been exemplified by firms like Quad/Graphics, who this month announced that it is expanding (not contracting) its commitment to the on-site industry. It joins many other firms and municipalities (and even a couple of states) who are marching forward, ignoring politics, and emphasizing possibilities. |
| New Directions for QuadMed? | | |
Some twenty-plus years ago, Quad/Graphics (a Milwaukee-based printing company) was frustrated with rising health care costs and the services that resulted. Their founder, the late Harry Quadracci, directed their one, hired physician to begin seeing all employees (not just those with work-related injuries) and began to confer with his brother, a practicing physician in Seattle on how to further expand services. Dr. Len Quadracci eventually joined the Quad/Graphics team, and a joint venture was formed with a local healthcare system. The result was QuadMed, which now serves the parent company, as well as several key Milwaukee-based employers.
Over the two decades of its existence, clinics were developed at each of the plant sites, and programs were initiated to support the physicians. Quad/Graphics was committed to computerization and so was QuadMed. While local hospitals and doctors struggled with EMR technology, QuadMed implemented it. They also became fully HIPAA compliant at a time when the hospitals across the nation were asking for an extension. They had a full-fledged medical home model before the concept was popularized.
Quad/Graphics recently went public with the acquisition of a Canadian-based printing company (Worldcolor) and the QuadMed team, John Neuberger and Ray Zastrow, M.D., have been busy with strategies to expand the concepts developed at QuadMed to a company that has just doubled in size. As many readers of this newsletter know, Dr. Len Quadracci is semi-retired, Ray Zastrow is the Chief Medical Officer of QuadMed ,and Mr. Neuberger is VP in charge of operations.
This past week, Joel Quadracci announced new staffing at QuadMed by adding Tim Dickman as the new President and Blake Wilkerson in a new position as the Vice President of Business Development. Both are new to the workplace on-site clinic industry, but not to healthcare. Mr. Dickman is the past president of Prime Therapeutics, a pharmacy benefit management company based in Minnesota. He also has experience at Towers Perrin where he worked with pharmacy benefits, pharmacy strategies, and related business processes. Mr. Wilkerson was a principal with Booz & Company in Chicago, a healthcare consulting firm. He has also worked for Blue Cross / Blue Shield.
In recent months, QuadMed has been slow to respond to RFPs while they have been focused internally on the new Quad/Graphics challenges. New staff have been added to an already very capable management team, and it will be interesting to see what their posture is in the near term. They certainly have the experience and the background to be a formidable vendor. Now, with the addition of a VP of Business Development, they appear to be poised to really go out and compete on a national level for new clients. |
| Tennessee Going for It? | | |
Tennessee is once again seeking consultative help in assessing their employee medical clinic operations (responses due 11/15/2010, solicitation # 31786-00107 for anyone who is interested in the bid packet). This is an effort that started last Spring with an RFI.
We got the bid information and will watch this closely, but we really do not have any "insider" information for anyone. However, we can share with you the fact that Tennessee has asked for some very far-reaching analyses and conclusions and seems to be searching for assistance, which would take them to the "next level" with clinics and programming that will include value-based approaches to the provision of healthcare. This state, if it is like most other states, is likely facing severe budget constraints and cost patterns for healthcare that generally exceed standard employer increases. (Perhaps in a future newsletter we can discuss why municipalities and states just always seem to pay more!)
In any case, the signal from Tennessee is that they are moving in the direction of many employers, and being a public entity, their solution and the process by which they reach it will be open for review and inspection. We will follow their journey and see where it leads us all. |
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Just one quick note to wrap up this newsletter. All of the activity by CMS may seem far-removed from your day-to-day operations where you don't bill Medicare or Medicaid. However, many of the changes required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 will have an impact directly upon you, your providers, and/or your employees and their dependents. Why?
One reason is the requirement that CMS create Web sites that compare the quality of hospitals and physicians to their peers. While these will not be up and running soon, when they are, your employees will be able to check these to see how providers "measure up." You may want to keep tabs on the progress CMS is making towards the creation of these sites. The data they provide may be helpful to you in contracting, and you will surely want to know what your employees are finding on the sites, too.
In addition, many of the requirements to prove meaningful use in an EMR should benefit not just Medicare providers, but you as well. So your evaluation of your current EMR system (or implementation of one for the first time) should include a review of those qualified under the meaningful use criteria. You can find those vendors at http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert. [We might note that Cerner (an on-site vendor and major provider of medical IT systems) has a PHR which seems to cover the waterfront with regard to the patient portal requirements in the Act.]
Sincerely,
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ON-SITE CLINIC NEWSLETTER
