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In This Issue:
Partners HealthCare is keenly focused on the changing environment, and leadership across the system embraces a goal to move to new payment models that will promote efficient and effective care that is affordable to patients and their families.
Ann Prestipino, director of the Office of Strategic Implementation, described Partners patient care focus in two forms: “population health management – caring for a population of patients over a period of time, and specialty care management – caring for patients referred to our specialists for a defined episode of care.”
A year and a half ago, Partners launched a strategic initiative to help prepare for the future. Its major emphasis is on improving value for patients. The strategic initiative has three main components:
Care redesign. Partners seeks to reinvent care from the patient’s point of view. The population health management team is developing the patient-centered medical home concept and caring for high-risk patients. The specialty care management teams – diabetes, coronary artery bypass graft, acute myocardial infarction, stroke and colon cancer – are implementing recommendations approved last fall, and new teams are in the works.
Patient affordability. Partners has committed to achieving $300 million in savings over three years. A major effort seeks to implement system-wide cost savings for products and services. By cutting costs and improving efficiency, Partners is taking important steps to make health care more affordable.
Reputation and communications. Partners wants to share this innovative story of care redesign and patient affordability with both internal and external audiences. A new print and electronic advertising campaign focuses on the theme, “Taking on health care’s toughest challenges.”
Prestipino said the strategic initiative also focuses on “employee health benefit redesign, palliative care, mental health, pediatric care, and our pending alliance with Neighborhood Health Plan, among others.” Related projects, such as the new Enterprise Clinical System, will transform the way Partners operates from an IT perspective.
“Thousands of Partners staff have been involved in these efforts so far,” she added. “Everyone is guided by the same mission, which is our touchstone for knowing the work we do and succeeding in the new health care environment.”