Yesterday’s Health Care Cabinet meeting wasn’t very
enlightening. The SIM report on consumer outreach was pretty much as expected. Consultants
reported on focus groups with HUSKY and uninsured consumers and described plans
for an online survey. Not surprisingly, they found lots of complaints about
challenges accessing health care, stigma and poor treatment. They did not
report talking about payment models or systems change with consumer groups and
it is not mentioned in their online survey. They are planning five new
taskforces and the current payment group will continue meeting. There was no
discussion of adding consumers or advocates to the groups. They intend to have a draft SIM plan ready by
Labor Day.
In other news, we have heard from advocates in other states
about their SIM processes. Most have large, public, diverse stakeholder
meetings that include consumers and advocates. Maryland’s SIM planning
is amazing. They started Local Health Improvement Coalitions in 2011 with
diverse membership – consumers, advocates, community organizations, schools,
public health, legislators, plus all the CT SIM stakeholder groups – and are
using their APCD, advanced analytics and performance monitoring to identify hot
spots and other problems, uniting the entire health system to create local
solutions. They intend to use the SIM grant to build on the local quality coalition
capacity. Payment reform is a much smaller part of their plan; quality is
clearly the priority.
Colorado also has an
exciting SIM process. They have a strong APCD and are also using the data to
target quality and access interventions.
They have a large, diverse, public stakeholder group, including
advocates and consumers, that meets monthly. They have a strong stakeholder and
public input process, including inviting written public comment on the final
plan. They even hired a consumer organization to write the patient-centered
care part of the plan.
