Greater Cincinnati receives award to improve health care system

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the Greater Cincinnati community was awarded a $13.8 million Beacon Community cooperative agreement. A part of the Recovery Act, the Beacon Community Program is aimed at achieving measurable improvements in health care quality, safety and efficiency in selected communities.

“Cincinnati Children's has been recognized nationally for its efforts to improve the quality and safety of care for children and families”

"The Beacon program uses health information technology tools to link health providers and other community-wide resources in new and innovative ways," Secretary Sebelius said. "Under the Beacon program, communities first identify leading health problems that are unique to their community, develop innovative, health IT-related strategies, and work together through community collaborations to implement their strategies and track their performance."

The Greater Cincinnati Beacon Collaboration is a 30 month initiative that will use technology and collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders and organizations to catalyze meaningful improvements in the quality and efficiency of health care delivery. HealthBridge and a consortium of partners including the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, GE, the Greater Cincinnati Health Council, the Health Improvement Collaborative, and the University of Cincinnati (UC) are the lead organizations for the Greater Cincinnati Beacon Collaboration.

"We are delighted to be a part of a select group of communities demonstrating to the nation how technology improvements and community collaboration can bring about real change in our health care system," said Robert Steffel, Chief Executive Officer for HealthBridge. "The announcement today is recognition of the tremendous commitment to collaboration and innovation by health care providers and community leaders in Greater Cincinnati."

Under two large demonstration projects, participants will work to improve care processes for children with asthma and adults with diabetes. These two projects build on and expand efforts that have been underway in the Greater Cincinnati region. The demonstration projects will help physician practices to provide optimal care for patients with asthma and diabetes, reduce preventable visits to emergency rooms and re-hospitalizations, and improve information flow and care coordination as patients move from one care setting to another.

Underlying these projects will be one of the nation's most advanced and secure networks for sharing electronic health information. HealthBridge will provide the technology infrastructure and connectivity: for hospitals to alert care teams when a patient has been released from the hospital and needs follow-up care, for a primary care doctor to send a summary of a patient's medical information electronically to a specialist, for patients to have improved access to their own health information, and for researchers to determine which interventions have the most impact on improving quality, cost and outcomes.

"Few communities can gather all of the unique community, technology and quality improvement assets that the Greater Cincinnati community can," said Robert Graham, M.D., project director for Cincinnati's Aligning Forces for Quality initiative and professor of family medicine at the UC College of Medicine. "This is an ambitious collaboration, but the combined expertise of the community partners, the commitment of employers and health plans, and the dedication of our provider community are second to none."

"Cincinnati Children's has been recognized nationally for its efforts to improve the quality and safety of care for children and families," said Dee Ellingwood, senior vice president, planning and business development at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "We are pleased to be a part of this collaboration and look forward to working with others in Greater Cincinnati to demonstrably improve outcomes for children in our community."

GE has committed to providing $1 million of in-kind resources, including equipment, software and funding to assist with performance measurement, public reporting and payment reform to support the Greater Cincinnati Beacon Collaboration, as well as an executive leader to assist in the effort.

"GE is committed to working together with providers and community leaders to improve the health care system in Greater Cincinnati," said Bill Fitzgerald, vice president and general manager of Assembly, Test and Overhaul at GE Aviation. "A high quality, affordable, accessible health system will benefit our employees and the entire community."

The Greater Cincinnati Beacon Collaboration will also coordinate closely with other federal and community programs such as the Tri-State Regional Extension Center, HealthBridge's Nationwide Health Information Network projects and the Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative. HealthBridge received a $9.7 million Regional Extension Center award in February 2010. The Health Improvement Collaborative is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation AF4Q grantee.

Today's federal award is part of the $2 billion effort to achieve widespread meaningful use of health IT in the United States and access to an electronic health record (EHR) for each person in the United States by 2014.