Creating New Models to Improve Health Care Value
What if healthcare focused less on healing in the hospital and more on keeping you healthy at home? And what if everyone in the healthcare system was aligned to provide the greatest value for your healthcare dollar – the best health outcome and the best patient experience at the lowest possible annual cost?
That’s the ambitious project under way at UH, under the guidance of Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, the health system’s Chief Clinical Transformation Officer.
Dr. Pronovost is best-known as the MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant” winner who saved thousands of lives nationwide with a simple yet ingenious checklist for preventing bloodstream infections. Now he’s teaming up with leaders and caregivers across the UH system to implement a new kind of checklist – one that helps patients stay well, get well or manage an acute condition – all in the most high value way.
For example, efforts are in motion with UH Department of Clinical Integration to make sure UH patients always have coordinated care. That means primary care providers and specialists working in tandem. At the same time, UH Ambulatory Operations and UH Digital Health are increasingly focused on directing patients to the best site of care, whether it’s one of UH’s 50 ambulatory health centers or in a patient’s home through UH Home Care or UH Virtual Visit.
A key part of the effort? The belief that every member of the UH team has a part to play in delivering high value care to patients.
“Take our environmental services workers,” Dr. Pronovost said. “They don’t just clean the hospital rooms. They’re infection control specialists with an important role to play in driving value and meeting our healing mission.
“The opportunity before us to drive value is great,” he added. “It will be realized by all of us at UH working together to make it happen.”