CHCE Forum: Measuring High Performers and Assessing Readiness to Change: Looking Beyond the Lamppost

Medical practices across the country are preparing to undergo transformations that will better enable them to provide evidence-based care, improve patient outcomes, and lower costs. New payment models and other incentive programs are encouraging practices to shift their health care from fee-for-service to value-based purchasing systems, such as accountable care organizations (ACOs), bundled payment models, and primary care medical homes (PCMHs). However, it is still unclear which organizational characteristics are critical for facilitating a successful transformation under these new models. Moreover, as practices and funders assess which organizations are ready for this change, they are discovering that it is not clear how to measure many of these potentially necessary characteristics. A distinguished panel of speakers discussed:

• Our ability to measure high performance and readiness for change
• Attributes that appear to be associated with successful adaptation of the ACO model
• Lessons learned from efforts to transform traditional primary care practices to PCMHs
• Efforts to develop tools that can assess readiness for change and high performance

Tim Lake, director of health research at Mathematica, moderated a discussion with the expert panel, which will include:

• Catherine DesRoches, Mathematica
• Craig Schneider, Mathematica
• Eric Gertner, Lehigh Valley Health Network
• Michael S. Barr, National Committee for Quality Assurance

For more information, please contact chce@mathematica-mpr.com.