AMCNO Participates in the Ohio Health Quality Improvement Summit (OHQIS)

This week, the Ohio Health Quality Improvement Summit (OHQIS) met over three days to identify the top 10 strategies that could transform Ohio’s health care system into a high quality, cost-effective, high performing system that optimizes the health of Ohioans by 2013. Participants in the Summit included physicians, healthcare executives, business leaders, employers, community advocates and others. 

In early 2008, the State of Ohio was chosen as one of nine states to participate in the Commonwealth Fund/AcademyHealth State Quality Improvement Institute (SQII) - an intensive, competitively-selected effort to help states plan and implement concrete action plans to improve health system performance across targeted quality indicators. States were selected based on having the commitment, leadership, and resources necessary to build on previous success and conceptualize and implement substantive new quality improvement efforts. In Ohio, this included factors such as the Governor’s focus on achieving a healthy Ohio, an interest on the part of the legislature in addressing concerns about cost and quality, a strong desire on the part of a variety of stakeholders to address systemic issues beyond health insurance coverage, and a number of local initiatives related to improving quality. 

After intensive meetings with national experts, the SQII Team decided that it made sense to pull together a diverse group of stakeholders in the state to develop a portfolio of health quality improvement strategies to which a wide array of stakeholders could commit, offering the opportunity for both short and long term return on investment.

To this end, the Ohio SQII Team organized the Ohio Health Quality Improvement Summit (OHQIS). As noted above the key question for the participants in this Summit was what are the top 10 strategies that will transform Ohio’s health care system into a high quality, cost-effective, high performing system that optimizes the health of Ohioans by 2013?

To answer this question the OHQIS focused on developing strategies and tactics related to four areas: improving patient safety and reducing errors, promoting health through personal responsibility and disease and injury prevention, improving chronic care management and improving efficiency and decreasing cost. The participants in the OHQIS worked over the three day timeframe to identify ten strategies and supporting tactics. These strategies and tactics are being developed into a report that will be disseminated to all of the participants from the summit inclusive of the AMCNO. The AMCNO will then have the opportunity to review the report and provide our comments. 
The participants in the QHQIS are to reconvene three months after the release of the report to review the strategy for implementation and to discuss the next steps in the process. Once the final report becomes available the AMCNO will provide additional information to our members. For more information about the Summit go to http://ohqis.pbwiki.com/