This is a collection of nine articles which are intended to provide data and other key information that health center staff can use to persuade their colleagues and leadership to more fully integrate quality and health information technology into health center operations.

These nine articles are sorted into three categories: Improving Care; Population Health Management; and Value-based Payment Models. Each summary includes a link so the reader may download and read the article in its entirety. 

IMPROVING CARE

• Clinicians Are Using Data From Public Reports on Their Performance to Improve Care [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation]
  • Lessons from a few of the 16 grantees participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative that discusses how transparency and collaboration can impact patient care.  For example, until one collaborative in Oregon began reporting the percent of women screened for chlamydia some practices were unaware that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends regular chlamydia screenings.
• Restructuring Care In A Federally Qualified Health Center To Better Meet Patients’ Needs [Health Affairs]
  • Clinica Family Services in Colorado restructured its appointment system to offer same-day appointments for comprehensive services, and group visits, especially to provide pre-natal care.  As a result, Clinica prevented 40 pre-mature births (as compared to a year earlier), resulting in one-year savings of $2.1 million.  This project also illuminated the difficulty of providing intensive care that is not fully reimbursed by Medicaid.
• Pursuing the Triple Aim: The First 7 Years [Millbank Memorial Fund]
  • The authors from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) analyzed how the implementation of the Triple Aim has progressed.  This longitudinal and comprehensive article describes three major principles that guided the organizations and communities participating in this study: creating the right foundation for population management, managing services at scale for the population, and establishing a learning system to drive and sustain work over time. 

POPULATION HEALTH MANAGEMENT

• Making Population Health Work at an FQHC: One CIO’s Experience [Healthcare Informatics]
  • The Vice President of Information Systems at Unity Health Care in Washington, DC speaks about her organization’s shift to harnessing EHR data to care for their patients.  She discusses some of their challenges, such as having updated patient demographic data, along with some of their successes, including hypertension and colon cancer screening.
• The Road to Population Health: Key Considerations in Making the Transition [McKinsey & Company]
  • A power point presentation that accompanied a webinar, this 2012 presentation lays out the context for transitioning to population health management, and how the transformation will impact payors, providers, and organizations.  The slides include comprehensive information including descriptions of different models of population health management, case studies, skills necessary for organizations to succeed with population health management, and how services delivered across the care continuum could differ after a successful transition to population health management.
• Three Key Elements for Successful Population Health Management [The Advisory Board] 
  • Transforming to payment models based on population health management requires careful planning.  This paper discusses three elements that have proven to be cornerstones of these transformations: information-based clinical decision-making, primary care led clinical teams, and deep patient engagement.

VALUE-BASED PAYMENT MODELS

• Better Value in Health Care Requires Focusing on Outcomes [Harvard Business Review]
  • This article discusses how a strategic approach to focusing and measuring outcomes leads to improved patient outcomes and decreased costs.  The article outlines five dimensions of an outcomes focus and provides compelling examples for each dimension.
• Demonstrating Value Using Triple Aim Measurement: Six Things Community Health Centers Can Do [American Institutes for Research]
  • The American Institutes for Research and the Blue Shield of California Foundation developed a toolkit full of advice, examples, and resources intended to help community health centers prepare for value-based payment.  The toolkit is organized around six steps, and includes downloadable resources such as surveys and inventories, deep dives on especially relevant topics, and a case study around a hypertension quality improvement program.
• Maintaining the Momentum: Using Value-Based Payments to Sustain Provider Innovations [Center for Health Care Strategies]
  • This article discusses five different types of value-based payment strategies that organizations may encounter, for example pay for performance.  In addition, the article provides links to other sites for examples of how these strategies are being used.