Inside Angle 3M

When South Shore Hospital Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) Director Kim Conner was tasked with analyzing the organization’s existing CDI program, she decided it was time for big changes. In this episode, Kim shares how she worked alongside coding, quality and physician teams to ensure complete and accurate documentation of patient encounters. Physician buy in through positive, data driven feedback and education has been key to the organization’s success, as well as recognizing physician burnout and working on ways to reduce it.

What are the fundamental drivers of high costs and low quality care in the U.S. health care system? In this episode, Sophia Tripoli, director of health care innovation at Families USA, describes her organization/s work on value initiatives that focus on re-orienting the health care system to deliver health. She also discusses forwarding consumer-focused policy agendas to improve health care delivery and payment systems.

Many states and health plans have adopted value-based payment models to address social determinants of health. How do these models work and are they working? In this episode, William Bleser, PhD at Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, digs into the details of some of these models, bringing to light key strategies for successful payment reform and pitfalls to avoid.

In order to practice medicine, doctors have to take and pass board certification exams to prove they are current in their field. Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation, reveals the importance of these exams beyond testing medical knowledge. He shares ideas about the future of primary care, quality measurement and what it truly means to be a good doctor.

When U.S. business leaders noticed that their employees in other countries were getting better care and outcomes for less cost than in the U.S., they knew something needed to change. Enter the Primary Care Collaborative (PCC), a not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization dedicated to sharing best practices to support the growth of high performing primary care. Ann Greiner, president and CEO of the PCC, describes the organization’s work and commitment to finding a solution to the current state of primary care in the U.S.

How can we fix the U.S. health care system so that it is both less costly and provides better patient outcomes? It’s a complicated question with no easy answer. One solution is to invest more in high quality primary care, with an emphasis on continuity of care that fosters a partnership between providers and patients. Chris Koller, president of the Milbank Memorial Fund, shares how the organization is working with public officials to improve the health of all populations and their work with states to set health care cost growth targets.