Clinical Effectiveness

Quality management services are a growing service line for BDC Advisors. Healthcare systems are increasingly measured and compared on patient safety and quality, and quality is becoming one of the best ways for physicians and hospitals to differentiate their services. The National Institute of Medicine’s back-to-back reports on patient safety and quality have stimulated the healthcare industry to invest in improving patient safety and quality and to add technology to prevent errors and assure higher compliance with evidence based standards of care. BDC Advisors’ quality management services are often combined with our work on contracting strategy, and the emergence of the pay-for-performance movement strengthens this linkage.

Quality management engagements can involve a number of key study questions:

• How can we use financial and non-financial incentives to align physicians and hospitals to improve patient safety and clinical quality?
• How can independent physicians organize to improve clinical integration?
• What forms of clinical integration result in the greatest improvements in patient safety and clinical quality?
• How can we use financial and non-financial incentives to improve physician compliance with evidenced based standards of care?
• How can physicians and hospitals best use technology and electronic medical records to support their patient safety and quality improvement initiatives?
• How can health plans and employers use financial incentives and contracting to provide incentives to improve patient safety and quality?
• What kind of information about patient safety and quality is useful to consumers?
• How can chronic disease management programs improve outcomes and reduce costs?
• How can quality of care be integrated with consumer driven health plans?
  

Examples:

Midwest Integrated Health System

BDC Advisors analyzed managed care results and developed a comprehensive health plan strategy that included offering pay-for-performance programs that are mutually agreed upon by the system and health plans as a way to use a portion of future rate increases to achieve objectives desired by the employers, plans, and providers.

South West Academic Health System

BDC Advisors assisted a group of decentralized ambulatory surgery centers in forming a clinically integrated network designed to improve patient safety and clinical quality through the use of protocols and financial incentives.