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Best Wishes for a Wonderful Holiday Season!
~ Quality Counts
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Director's Message
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As we near the year
end, I wanted to thank all of our Board, Members, and collaborators for your
many contributions over the past year, and give a brief update on both our
ongoing work and new directions.
First, many thanks to all of you
who were able to make a commitment to the work of Quality Counts by
participating in our annual Membership campaign. We recognize the
challenges of providing this support in these difficult financial times, and
are extremely grateful to the more than 60 individuals and organizations who
contributed to this year's appeal, including our 16 new Members, who make our
work possible.
Because of your
support, we are able to continue several important initiatives that we are
helping to align and lead, including Aligning Forces for Quality, the Maine
Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot, and - thanks to new funding support from
MeHAF - the Behavioral Health Metrics System initiative. Membership
support also helps with planning for our annual QC7 conference on April 16, an important
opportunity to convene stakeholders and identify collaborative approaches to
improving health and healthcare in Maine's
communities.
As we look forward, we
are also preparing for a new round of strategic planning to establish our
direction for the next several years. In preparation, our Board felt it
was time to update our mission and vision statements to better reflect our
work, and recently approved the following:
Mission: Quality Counts is
transforming health and healthcare in Maine
by leading, collaborating, and aligning improvement efforts.
Vision: Through the active
engagement and alignment of people, communities and healthcare partners, every
person in Maine
will enjoy the best of health and have access to patient centered care that is
uniformly high quality, equitable, and efficient.
We are eager to
continue working with our Members and all stakeholders around the state as we
look forward to the opportunities of the new year.
My best for a peaceful
and joyous holiday season!
Lisa M. Letourneau MD,
MPH
Executive Director
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Maine's Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot - Update
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Maine's
Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot Launches with First Learning Session on October 30, 2009 at Maple Hill Farm
Physician practice teams from around Maine
who were selected to participate in Maine's
Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Pilot launched the initiative by holding
their first learning session at the Maple Hill Farm Inn and Conference Center in Hallowell, Maine
on Friday, October 30th. There
will be three sessions per year over the course of the three year pilot. Drs, Christine and Tom Sinsky, practicing
physicians from Iowa and expert presenters on the topic of Medical Homes,
worked with the over 125 people in attendance to support their work and share
best practices on transforming to this new model of care.
The Maine PCMH Pilot includes 22
adult and 4 pediatric practices from communities across the state who will be working
together over a 3-year period. PCMH is a new model for delivering primary care
services to consumers. Participating practices
commit to achieving national recognition standards and work to
meet established core expectations. The PCMH model offers an exciting and promising approach to
transforming healthcare as it supports both the practice transformation and the
payment reform required to improve primary care.
The
Dirigo Health Agency's Maine Quality Forum, Quality Counts, and
the Maine Health Management Coalition are the conveners of this multi-stakeholder
effort. The ultimate goal of this effort is to sustain and revitalize primary
care both to improve health outcomes for all Maine people and to reduce overall
healthcare costs.
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Aligning Forces for Quality Initiative
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What exactly is Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q)?
"Aligning Forces for Quality" (AF4Q) is the name of a set of statewide improvement efforts that aim to align activities in three key areas that drive improvements in healthcare quality in Maine:
* Engaging consumers to understand that quality matters, quality varies, and people
have a role in improving their health care.
* Performance measurement and public reporting of quality data
* Capacity to help healthcare professionals improve the quality of care
In addition, there is also a focus within AF4Q improvement efforts to build nurse leadership and improve equity of healthcare.
The organization behind the research and management of AF4Q is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Across the country, RWJF is working with 15 AF4Q communities to improve the overall quality of healthcare within their region. We are very fortunate that Quality Counts, in conjunction with the Maine Health Management Coalition and the Maine Quality Forum, were selected to participate.
Through a series of articles in
this and subsequent e-newsletters, we will
explore the key components of the AF4Q effort in Maine, beginning with consumer
engagement.
Part I : A Look at Consumer Engagement
As consumers, what does 'quality' mean, and how can we actively participate and manage our healthcare and make informed choices? These questions, and more, are being addressed by AF4Q comunities around the country.
Quality Improvement in
healthcare means...
Quality
healthcare helps people stay healthy, recover from illness, manage living with a
chronic disease or disability, and even prepare for the end of life. Quality healthcare ensures these services are
delivered in a way that is safe, timely, effective, patient centered,
efficient, and equitable. Improving
communication between a patient and their care givers is the a key
to improving not only the "hands on" care during
treatment, but the whole decision making process. This includes respecting patients'
preferences and giving them the ability to participate and assist
in their treatment process. Consumers
have a right to be informed and a right to have access to specific information, data
and research around their particular illness.
To help people better understand
healthcare quality and their role in getting high quality care, the
Maine AF4Q effort is developing a set of tools and messages that encourage
people to get more engaged in their
healthcare. These
messages are being promoted under the banner of "Quality Counts for ME" as a set of
three themes, which collectively
encourage Maine
people to...
Ask - e.g. ask your doctor
or healthcare team about your healthcare options, promoted in AF4Q with the theme of "Questions
are the answer"
Learn- e.g. when choosing a
healthcare provider, check available quality
information, promoted under "Care enough
to compare"
Act - e.g. partner with
your provider to improve your health, promoted under "Get on the pathway
to better health"
To learn more
about the "Quality Counts for ME" messages and tools, visit our website. In addition, quality
healthcare means helping consumers use information to choose the doctor or
hospital that is right for them. The Maine Health Management Coalition provides
a website consumers can use to help them learn about
differences in healthcare quality measures.
To guide our
efforts to better engage consumers in their healthcare, the AF4Q staff has convened a "Consumer Engagement Leadership Team" that includes representatives from some of Maine's leading consumer organizations such as as AARP, the Maine Education
Association Benefits Trust, the Office of MaineCare Services, the Maine Peoples Alliance and the City of Portland's Public Health Division to name a few. These partners have been instrumental in helping us spread these messages to consumers in our state by distributing the "Quality Counts for ME" information through their websites, newsletters, etc. These resources include tools such as the "Maine Diabetes Pathway", which offers information on high quality diabetes care, and a checklist to bring to doctor's appointments. Currently, the Af4Q consumer engagement team is working to develop an advertising campaign to help spread these messages through print and radio.
Quality Counts is
also looking for consumers who are interested in learning more about healthcare
quality and working on projects designed to help improve the quality of care in
Maine.
Join our consumer engagement communication list by sending an email to info@mainequalitycounts.org.
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***SAVE THE DATE ***
Friday, April 16, 2010 ~ Augusta Civic Center
Quality Counts, Part 7
Transforming Health and Healthcare in Maine's Communities: What's Your Role?
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Quality Counts 7 - a "Best Practice College"
Quality Counts 7 (QC7) is the latest in our series of annual conferences
which promote transformational changes needed to create dramatic and
sustainable improvements in health and healthcare in Maine.
The conference will feature a range of data sources to examine benchmarks
of health and healthcare in our communities, including county-level health
rankings across Maine.
It will also provide opportunities for stakeholders within and across
communities to identify ways to work together to identify common goals and, by
working together, overcome barriers to create transformative and sustainable
change in Maine.
This conference will
provide beneficial information to all healthcare providers, including
physicians and other clinicians; hospital and nursing leaders; employers;
payers; consumers; health policy makers; public health workers, including
Healthy Maine Partnership staff; health educators; healthcare administrators; and
physician office staff, including practice managers, nurses, case managers,
medical assistants.
Be sure to read our next newsletter to learn more about the conference!
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Please visit our website www.mainequalitycounts.org to get updates on our programs, learn about quality initiatives across the state, view our partner and member organizations and participate in our online discussion forum!
If you are not on our mailing list, please sign up here!
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