FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Nancy M. Strassel
(513) 531-0200

Christine Larson, Center for Health Improvement
(916) 930-9200

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Gives Cincinnati Area
Health Care Market A Check-Up
Study Looks At Readiness to Improve
Quality of Health Care for Chronically Ill Persons

Regional Collaborative Efforts Important to
Improving Care, Report Concludes

Thursday, April 18, 2007 – Greater Cincinnati is one of 14 communities studied in a just-released report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Center for Heath Improvement (CHI) that examines how communities can drive and sustain high quality health care.

Based on the hypothesis that well-functioning health care markets can help to drive sustainable quality, the report measures and compares seven major market attributes recommended by the Institute of Medicine’s seminal report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, and by key national experts. These likely important components of well-functioning health care markets are:

• community leadership
• community’s ability to support provider quality improvement
• efforts to measure performance
• efforts to report performance measures publicly
• attempts to align provider financial incentives with improvement
• status of health information technology infrastructure
• activities designed to engage the community’s consumers in health care quality problems.

“We are pleased to be one of the 14 communities examined and glad that our area is garnering national attention for many exciting developments in the local health care marketplace,” said Nancy M. Strassel, senior vice president, Greater Cincinnati Health Council, and special projects director for the Health Improvement Collaborative.

Among the seven components, the Cincinnati area performed best at community leadership, performance measurement and public reporting. “We intend to build on these strengths as we work together to improve health care across the board,” Strassel said. For example, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in February chose Greater Cincinnati as one of 14 communities funded for a three-year, $600,000 local initiative called Aligning Forces for Quality: A Regional Market Project. That project will focus on chronic illness care and address all market attributes noted in today’s report, Strassel said. Schering Plough Corporation recently announced additional funding of $200,000 for this effort.

“We are extremely fortunate in this community to have health leaders willing to work together since there are multiple pieces that have to fall into place in order to make significant and meaningful improvements in chronic illness care,” said Greg Ebel, Health Improvement Collaborative executive director. “The majority of health care dollars are spent on chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart conditions and depression,” he said.

“The Cincinnati Aligning Forces effort will not only build on our strong points but enable us to address areas of weakness,” Ebel noted. Scores among the 14 communities included in the report ranged from a high of 43.2 to a low of 20.1. Greater Cincinnati weighed in at 32.9, the fourth highest overall score.

“The study measured the ‘market readiness’ of the Cincinnati area and offers a starting point and an end goal for improvement,” said Patricia Powers, M.P.P.A., president and chief executive officer of the Center for Health Improvement based in Sacramento, Calif., who oversaw the community study and directs Aligning Forces for Quality. “The study demonstrates the multiple opportunities for communities to improve, such as measuring the actual performance of providers, reporting that information and getting consumers to act on it.”

Powers noted that this study of the 14 communities was undertaken to help design the Aligning Forces for Quality program. “We want to help doctors, nurses and other health care providers work together to deliver better care, and educate patients and consumers to make better, more informed choices. Understanding how the market forces work inside a community’s health care market is essential if we want to drive and sustain quality.”

The report notes wide variations in the seven attributes among the 14 communities. The report underscores the need to account for local and regional variations in any national effort to improve health care quality. “The report will help the Cincinnati area draw its own roadmap for improvement,” Strassel said. “It calls attention to the fact that each health care market is unique, and solutions are best identified locally.”

“Despite concerted efforts and significant investments by the federal government, RWJF and others; health care costs continue to soar and the overall quality of U.S. health care continues to be mediocre,” said Michael Painter, J.D., M.D., senior program officer at RWJF. “We believe regional collaborative efforts are the next logical step for quality improvement efforts.”

The other communities involved in the market readiness scan include Boston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Madison, Wis., Memphis, Tenn., Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Rhode Island, Rochester, N.Y., Savannah, Ga. and Seattle.

To read the full report, please go to: www.rwjf.org/qualitypubs or www.forces4quality.org.

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