07 Oct 2021
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MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program Year 2021 Update

MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program Year 2021 Update

October 7, 2021 | 0 Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted hospitals throughout the state in 2020 and the MVC Coordinating Center deemed it necessary to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) program. The goal was to determine if adjustments needed to be made to maintain fairness across the collaborative for index admissions in the calendar year of 2020, which will be used to score the 2021 program year.

The MVC Coordinating Center found that 223 of the 25,627 (0.9%) episodes included in the P4P conditions from the first half of 2020 had a code for confirmed COVID-19 infection in the index event or other inpatient settings. Pneumonia and congestive heart failure (CHF) were the most common conditions to have a COVID-19 diagnosis.

The MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P program rewards hospitals for either making improvements over their baseline episode payment or for being less expensive than peer hospitals. The MVC Coordinating Center has also found that episodes of COVID-19 patients are generally more expensive than typical episodes. Additionally, COVID-19 was not present in the baseline year of 2018 that hospitals will be evaluated against and hospitals were impacted differently.

Therefore, with approval from BCBSM, the MVC Coordinating Center will remove any 2020 episode with a COVID-19 diagnosis on an inpatient facility claim during the 30-day episode if the COVID-19 ICD code is one of the first three diagnosis codes on the claim. Please contact the MVC Coordinating Center with any questions at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

30 Sep 2021
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Fall Semi-Annual Meeting Agenda Highlights Health Equity Topics

Fall Semi-Annual Meeting Agenda Highlights Health Equity Topics

September 30, 2021 | 0 Comments | ,

The MVC Coordinating Center recently released the full agenda for its forthcoming fall Semi-Annual Meeting on Friday, October 22, 2021, from 10:00-11:30 am. The MVC Coordinating Center holds collaborative-wide meetings twice each year to bring together quality leaders and clinicians from across the state. This year’s theme of “the social risk and health equity dilemma” is reflective of a growing priority within the healthcare system generally, as well as newer activities within the MVC Coordinating Center.

Speakers at semi-annual events are often members who share their stories of success, challenges, barriers, and solutions in pursuing a higher value and quality of care. The speakers outlined on October’s agenda showcase the breadth and depth of knowledge that exists within the collaborative in the health equity space. They also represent a variety of stakeholder groups, including hospitals, physician organizations (POs), Collaborative Quality Improvement (CQIs) programs, and of course MVC Coordinating Center leadership.

The first guest speaker will be Carol Gray, Program Manager of the new Michigan Social Health Interventions to Eliminate Disparities (MSHIELD) CQI. She leads the overall management, performance, and coordination of the MSHIELD program and Coordinating Center team. She has extensive experience managing public health research teams, communicating across and coordinating with multiple partnerships, and linking and engaging with community-based organizations in Detroit and academic faculty at the University of Michigan. Her presentation on, “Aligning Partnerships to Achieve Health Equity,” will speak to that expertise.

The meeting also features the expertise of Dr. Nicole J. Franklin, Assistant Medical Director at the McLaren Bariatric and Metabolic Institute. She provides psychological support to bariatric patients before and after weight loss surgery. In addition, Dr. Franklin is the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee at McLaren Flint and has co-facilitated the Diversity Committee within all three local hospitals’ psychology training programs for the last 10 years. She is an Air Force veteran and a graduate of Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology. Referencing her work within the greater Flint community, her session will address, “The Health Gap: An Exploration of how one hospital is working to bridge the gaps between health care and social care.”

Another perspective will be brought by Leah Corneail, Director of Utilization and Population Health at the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA). In this role, she is responsible for leading utilization and cost improvement efforts, ensuring success in risk-based contracts and CMS demonstration programs, and collaborating with community partners to improve population health. Corneail has several years of experience in population health and health policy. Prior to joining IHA, she served as a Senior Project Manager in the Michigan Medicine Population Health Office, where she managed Michigan Medicine’s portfolio of value-based payment models and partnered with operations to implement care transformation initiatives. Leah received her Master of Public Health degree from The George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. She will speak to, “IHA Efforts to Screen and Address Patient Social Influencers of Health (SIOH).”

Also representing the approach of a PO will be Melissa Gary, Community Liaison with the Great Lakes Physician Organization (GLPO). In this role, Melissa is responsible for bridging the gap between healthcare providers of GLPO and the local community agencies to better align the mission of GLPO. Utilizing her several years of experience in healthcare and nonprofit organizations, she has built the GLPO social determinants of health process. She is a passionate community servant with the ability to motivate and inspire individuals to identify their own potential and shares in the passion to serve others. Melissa is a graduate from Ferris State University where she studied nuclear medicine and healthcare administration. She has minors in science, biology, pre-pharmacy and paralegal.

Attendees can also expect to hear from MVC Coordinating Center leadership and staff about MVC’s Medicaid data, the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program, and general program updates.

These presentations could be informative and useful for any of the following stakeholders who are welcome to attend:

  • MVC Hospital Site Coordinators and Champions
  • MVC Physician Organization Site Coordinators
  • Quality Leadership
  • Clinicians
  • Managers and front-line staff in the following clinical areas:
    • Population health
    • Chronic disease management
    • Post-acute care
    • Value-based care
    • Care coordination
    • Discharge planning
    • Social work
    • Others whose work addresses health equity or social risk factors

In addition, hospitals that have attended both of MVC's 2021 Semi-Annual Events (May 2021 and October 2021) will be eligible for one additional bonus point toward Program Year 2021 of the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program.

Those interested in attending this informative and collaborative meeting should register here. The MVC Coordinating Center looks forward to a fantastic meeting. See you there!

02 Sep 2021
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Joint, CHF Top Members’ Selections for MVC P4P Program

September 2, 2021 | 0 Comments

The MVC Coordinating Center recently distributed condition selection reports for Program Years 2022 and 2023 of the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program. The reports were provided in conjunction with details pertaining to the condition selection process, as well as changes to the scoring methodology, cohort assignments, and bonus points available. More details about those changes was published in a previous MVC Coordinating Center blog.

Eligible members were tasked with reviewing these reports and returning their condition selection form at the end of August. Each participating hospital selected two of the seven available conditions for PY22 and PY23: spine surgery, joint replacement, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), congestive heart failure (CHF), colectomy (non-cancer), and pneumonia. The condition that was selected by the most participants was joint replacement with 41 hospitals selecting it, followed closely by CHF with 40 selections. COPD was selected by 32 hospitals. See Figure 1 for a depiction of the total selections for each condition.

Figure 1.

Although the two conditions selected most frequently were consistent across a variety of hospitals, the overall selections varied somewhat from region to region and by hospital size or type. For instance, hospitals with fewer than 100 beds were much more likely to select pneumonia as one of their two conditions than peers with more than 100 hospital beds (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Conversely, larger hospitals that perform more complex procedures made up the totality of selections for spinal surgery, colectomy, and CABG. Still, joint replacement and CHF were the most commonly selected conditions among all hospital sizes.

Similarly, CHF and joint replacement were popular among all hospitals regardless of location type, such as urban or rural (see Figure 3), or location within the state (see Figure 4), with the exception of Region 4 hospitals selecting COPD more frequently than joint replacement.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

With the majority of hospitals focusing on both joint replacement and CHF, the MVC Coordinating Center hopes that continued participation at the joint and CHF workgroups will result in meaningful collaboration among members. MVC will also continue to offer events for virtual networking with facilities and physician organizations (POs) within a member’s geographic region (see Figure 5). These regional networking events provide additional opportunities to connect and share knowledge with peers who may share your hospital’s priorities. For instance, the next Coffee, Chat, and Collaborate virtual networking event takes place among hospitals and POs in Region 1 on Monday, September 13, at noon. Members from Region 1 interested in attending can register here.

Figure 5.

P4P cohorts were reassigned for PY22 and PY23. These changes were also detailed in the new technical document, and the new cohort assignments were published on the MVC website. The cohorts were not intended to group hospitals that are exactly alike; rather, they created a reasonably comparable grouping from which MVC can complete statistical analyses.

This program began in 2018, when BCBSM allocated 10% of its P4P program to an episode of care spending metric based on MVC data. This metric measures hospital performance using price-standardized, risk-adjusted 30-day episode payments for BCBSM Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS), BCBSM Medicare Advantage, Blue Care Network (BCN) Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), and BCN Medicare Advantage.

If you would like to receive notices about the MVC workgroups or have questions about any aspect of the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program, please contact the MVC Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

26 Aug 2021
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MVC Coordinating Center Launches Health Equity Report

August 26, 2021 | 0 Comments | , ,

As hospitals begin to identify lessons learned since the start of the pandemic, providers are keenly aware of the prevalence and exacerbation of existing health inequities. Despite the fact that many providers are increasingly interested in addressing the social determinants of health (SDOH) and equitable access to care, communities of color and other minorities that are statistically more impacted by SDOH and socioeconomic status (SES) have endured even wider gaps in health outcomes and care this past year. For many hospitals and physician organizations, the way forward requires the application of a health equity or social risk lens across the board, so that basic healthcare and quality improvement decision-making can be maximized for all patient populations, not just those with fewer social risk factors. The MVC Coordinating Center is, therefore, proud to have released its first MVC Health Equity Report to its membership on Wednesday morning.

MVC began developing metrics for its membership in this area over the past year so providers might better understand where inequities are materializing within the four walls of their hospitals and beyond. One popular method for identifying low-SES patients is by determining where someone lives and applying population-level metrics to the individual. Examples of this would be using the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) or Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Both indexes are based on census tract data and provide SES characteristics about a population within a specific geographic location (i.e., a census tract), including risk factors such as poverty, education level, transportation access, and housing security. However, in developing the MVC Health Equity Report, the MVC Coordinating Center elected to utilize a patient-level metric of SES that is compatible with MVC claims data. As a result, the report identifies low-SES patients using dual-eligibility status.

Dual-eligible beneficiaries are patients that are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. In the MVC Health Equity Report, dual eligibility is defined as having been eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid at any point during the year of the index admission and is limited to patients that were at least 65 years old at the time of admission. Medicaid eligibility is a good indicator of SES when using claims data since it is income-based, and studies have shown that there is a strong association between low-income status and adverse health outcomes. Dual eligibility allows MVC analysts to identify Medicaid-eligible patients within its more extensive Medicare data set for analyses. Medicare data on the MVC registry currently includes claims data from 1/1/2015 through 9/30/2020. The resulting reports prepared for members focuses on episodes occurring between 2017 and 2020, or between 2017 and 2019 if the circumstances of 2020 resulted in unusual case counts by facility.

In developing this report, there was a conscious decision to exclude any sort of comparison group alongside each individual hospital's metrics. This is because the socioeconomic factors of a hospital’s patient population cannot be changed, and there is great diversity between hospitals throughout the state and within geographic regions. For those reasons, benchmarking was not the intention of this report. However, it is important to note that across the state, the data analyzed by the MVC Coordinating Center consistently indicates that dual-eligible patients have poorer outcomes than their non-dual-eligible counterparts, including longer lengths of stay, higher readmission rates, higher post-discharge emergency department utilization, lower rates of office visits post-discharge, higher rates of post-discharge outpatient procedures, and higher utilization of skilled nursing facilities. Blinded sample graphs for length of stay (Figure 1) and readmission rates (Figure 2) were created using data from three distinct, large hospitals in order to showcase some of these differences.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Members receiving reports will see a variety of graphs depicting, for example, total episode payment trends, 30-day readmission rate trends, and post-acute care utilization. Also provided is a table outlining a hospital or region’s highest volume of conditions within its dual-eligible population (see Figure 3 for a blinded sample). The purpose of this table is to help members better understand the proportion of dual-eligible patients at their hospital and the prevalence of various conditions within that population. It will also help members to better understand their report overall by identifying the conditions and procedures driving the various metrics included within it.

Figure 3.

MVC is eager to do more in this space in the months ahead. With the recently added Michigan Medicaid data on the MVC registry, the Coordinating Center has a new opportunity to more closely examine the types of disparities that are prevalent in healthcare. Additionally, with the addition of 13 rural or critical access hospitals to the collaborative in the past 12 months, the Coordinating Center aims to expand its metrics outside of the episode structure to examine population health metrics. This will allow for better understanding about healthcare delivery and how outcomes differ in rural regions compared to urban.

The MVC Coordinating Center wants to hear feedback from its members. With the addition of Medicaid data, we are working hard to develop more metrics and reports that focus on health equity. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact the MVC Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollabortative@gmail.com.

05 Aug 2021
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MVC Registry Expands with Addition of Medicaid Episodes

August 5, 2021 | 0 Comments |

The Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) Coordinating Center recently added Medicaid data to its registry. This update reflects the culmination of many months of work to acquire, process, clean, and add the data, which became available on July 16 to MVC registry users. The current data set is from 1/1/15 through 9/30/19, which amounts to claims from 1/1/15 through 12/31/19. MVC data sources now comprise over 80% of Michigan’s insured population. This represents an additional 1.8 million covered lives (see Figure 1). MVC’s data sources now include Medicare FFS, Commercial Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) PPO, Medicare Advantage BCBSM PPO, Commercial Blue Care Network (BCN) HMO, Medicare Advantage BCN, and Michigan Medicaid.

Figure 1.

The addition of Medicaid data will impact, among other things, the distribution of MVC episodes across its portfolio of payers. Medicare is still the dominant payer within MVC data with more than 641,747 episodes. However, the new distribution of MVC episodes by payer (Figure 2) showcases that Medicaid is now the third-largest payer in MVC data, accounting for 18% of total episodes.

Figure 2.

MVC currently serves 97 participating hospitals, including critical access members, and 40 physician organizations in Michigan. The proportion of Medicaid episodes in MVC data by facility (Figure 3) varies significantly across MVC’s membership, with some members attributing less than 5% of their episodes to Medicaid and some near 60%. For the bulk of MVC’s membership, between 10% and 30% of their episodes are in Medicaid, which represents a significant increase in the total episodes they can now utilize. For some MVC hospitals, the number of episodes they have in MVC data may double if they have a large share of Medicaid patients.

Figure 3.

MVC currently provides data on 40 defined conditions. The addition of Medicaid data is likely to impact certain conditions more than others in keeping with the types of procedures and conditions most prevalent with Medicaid-eligible populations. The top five Medicaid conditions include sepsis, C-section, vaginal delivery, cholecystectomy, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), so members are more likely to see changes to their utilization data for those conditions. The number of episodes being added for each condition is outlined in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

The Medicaid data will also allow for the creation of new data visualizations and reports that capture information not previously available. For example, MVC analysts recently generated two new Medicaid-based maps (Figures 5 and 6) that help visualize utilization and location information for the Medicaid population. Figure 5 represents the patient Zip codes that can be attributed to Medicaid episodes in MVC data, with Zip codes appearing darker if a larger percentage of Medicaid patients reside there. This allows members to see those communities near their own facilities that are likely home to the Medicaid patients they serve.

Figure 6 also represents the percentage of episodes attributed to Medicaid patients, with darker colors representative of higher percentages; however, Figure 6 connects these Medicaid episodes to MVC member facilities rather than Zip codes and visualizes the total number of episodes in addition to the percentage. Together, these two figures provide MVC members with more information about their Medicaid populations as well as the extent to which utilization varies between peer facilities in the same region.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

These maps are the first example of new outputs that are possible with the addition of Medicaid data. The MVC Coordinating Center plans to produce additional reports for members that leverage the new data set. One area of interest is the social determinants of health. Since Medicaid provides medical assistance to disabled and low-income individuals, statistical analysis using this data often reflects trends tied to low socioeconomic status populations. Ideally, this data set will allow MVC and its members to invest more attention and resources into equity-based quality improvement projects.

The MVC Coordinating Center is eager to learn which topics are of greatest interest to members that integrate Medicaid claims. If your team has specific ideas that could help guide this work, please contact MVC at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

22 Jul 2021
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Condition Selection Process Announced for MVC Component of BCBSM P4P Program

July 22, 2021 | 0 Comments

This week the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) Coordinating Center announced the condition selection process for program year (PY) 2022 and PY 2023 of the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) program. The timeline for each program year’s stages are detailed in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

In the announcement, hospitals were tasked with selecting two conditions for which they will be evaluated and returning their condition selection form to the Coordinating Center by Friday, August 13, 2021. The announcement also outlined changes to the scoring methodology, cohort assignments, and bonus points available.

The Coordinating Center’s recent announcement included condition selection reports with targets for each condition option that may help inform hospitals’ selection decisions. Each participating hospital will choose two of the seven available conditions for PY22 and PY23: spine surgery, joint replacement, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), congestive heart failure (CHF), colectomy (non-cancer), and pneumonia. When selecting conditions, the Coordinating Center recommends reviewing your data in the registry and considering several factors for each condition, including case counts and identifiable areas with the greatest cost opportunities. The Coordinating Center also recommends considering where resources are currently being directed in your facility and potentially aligning with those efforts.

One notable change from prior program years is the methodology by which hospitals earn achievement and improvement points. Hospital scores will continue to be based on a hospital’s risk-adjusted, price-standardized total episode payments for two selected conditions, and they can still earn a maximum score of 10 points. However, the improvement and achievement scores will become more similar in order to be placed on the same scale. As such, the achievement equation will change from being based on rank within MVC cohort at performance year to being based on distance from MVC cohort mean at baseline year. Similarly, the improvement equation will utilize the distance from the hospital’s mean at baseline. These new equations (see Figure 2) as well as complete descriptions of the updated methodologies are reviewed at length with examples in the technical document.

Figure 2.

P4P cohorts have also been reassigned for PY22 and PY23. These changes are also detailed in the technical document, and the new cohort assignments can be found on the MVC website. The cohorts are not intended to group hospitals that are exactly alike; rather, they create a reasonably-comparable grouping from which MVC can complete statistical analysis.

The final change is to the awarding of bonus points. In place of the previous 5% cohort reduction bonus, participants can instead earn bonus points by completing two questionnaires (one per selected condition) and submitting these to the Coordinating Center by November 1st of each program year. The purpose of this is to gather examples of quality improvement initiatives in operation at MVC member hospitals to share with the Collaborative. Moving forward, this will help support members in reducing costs through collaboration.

Each of the changes mentioned above are designed to deliver a more transparent, intuitive, flexible, and fairer P4P program. The Coordinating Center will offer an explainer webinar to answer questions and walk through the details of these changes in more detail. The webinar will be offered on two dates: the first is scheduled for Thursday, July 29 from 11:00-12:00 pm, and the second is on Tuesday, August 3 from 1:00-2:00 pm. Both webinars can be accessed using the following Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/95502303999. Participants can also call +1 301 715 8592 (meeting ID #955 0230 3999). For those interested in the explainer webinar who are unavailable on both dates, a recording of the first webinar will be available. If you are interested in receiving a link to this recording, please email the MVC team at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

14 Jul 2021
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Introducing Carla Novak, MVC’s Administrative Assistant

Introducing Carla Novak, MVC’s Administrative Assistant

July 14, 2021 | 0 Comments

I am excited to be joining the MVC team as the Administrative Assistant. I was born in Ohio (Go Buckeyes!) and moved to Michigan when I was young. I have always had a desire to work on the clerical side of healthcare, which led me to several roles within Michigan Medicine.

Most recently, I worked as a Referral Coordinator for the U-M Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, where I obtained insurance authorizations for various procedures. Prior to this I worked as an Administrative Assistant on an inpatient unit within the hospital, providing support to roughly 90 employees and our management team. I also processed payroll, reimbursements, PTO requests, and more.

As MVC’s Administrative Assistant, I look forward to assisting with the day-to-day needs of the Coordinating Center. I am thankful for the opportunity to work with this great team and look forward to getting to know each and every one of you!

30 Jun 2021
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Introducing MVC’s Newest Analyst, Kristen Palframan, MPH

Introducing MVC’s Newest Analyst, Kristen Palframan, MPH

June 30, 2021 | 0 Comments

I am excited to have joined the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) this month as a data analyst. I’m really looking forward to working with the MVC team and using my experience in data management and analysis to support the goal of improving the quality and value of healthcare in Michigan.

My background is primarily in research and data analysis. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Behavior from Bucknell University. After conducting behavioral research and wildlife disease fieldwork with animals throughout and following college, I developed an interest in disease prevention and came to Michigan to pursue a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. During my MPH program I took a variety of epidemiology and statistics courses, and I particularly enjoyed those that involved programming in SAS and SQL. After graduating from the University of Michigan with an MPH degree in Epidemiology in 2018, I worked for three years as an epidemiologist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. At the VA, I worked on analyses, reports, dashboards, and manuscripts focused on supporting suicide prevention among U.S. Veterans. My work for the VA primarily used electronic medical record data from the Veterans Health Administration as well as mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Death Index.

Now I am thrilled to use my experience in healthcare data analysis to support MVC’s mission and I’m looking forward to growing as an analyst and gaining experience working with claims data. If you have any questions or would like to contact me, please feel free to email me at kpalf@med.umich.edu.

17 Jun 2021
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Custom Hospital Analytics Result in Case Study for Collaborative

June 17, 2021 | 0 Comments | , ,

The Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) Coordinating Center encourages its members to seek out custom analytics to inform and support ongoing quality improvement activities. These requests can help hospitals and physician organizations dig deeper into specific aspects of their administrative claims data and, as a result, better understand areas for improvement.

As custom analytics have been prepared and shared with respective members, the Coordinating Center has endeavored to learn the extent to which these analytics have been utilized. The resulting feedback has enriched MVC’s understanding of its members’ quality initiatives, and presents a great opportunity for MVC to educate its members about the successes and lessons learned of their peers.

In that spirit, the Coordinating Center has sought the permission of various hospitals to generate case studies based on this collaborative work. One such case study featuring McLaren Port Huron Hospital was created this past year and shared with the entire Collaborative via the MVC Newsletter (Figure 1). It features a custom analytics request about the rates and adherence of follow-up visits in their congestive heart failure (CHF) population as well as readmission rates for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The resulting custom analytics reports prepared by the Coordinating Center were also accompanied by best practice sharing sourced from other Collaborative members.

Figure 1.

The Coordinating Center plans to continue to generate shareable case studies about similar requests if those facilities have provided their permission. Similarly, MVC will continue to identify such opportunities for information sharing and networking across facilities in order to support its members.

If any members of the Collaborative are interested in pursuing custom analytics in the future or have ideas to share across hospitals, please contact the Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

10 Jun 2021
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Virtual Site Visits Underway with MVC Members

June 10, 2021 | 0 Comments | , ,

The COVID-19 pandemic affected hospital operations in a myriad of ways, with many Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) members experiencing circumstances that could impact their score on the MVC Component of the BCBSM Pay-for-Performance (P4P) program. In order to mitigate some of the effect of COVID-19, the MVC Coordinating Center introduced two extra bonus points to be earned for Program Year 2021 only. One bonus point can be achieved by attending both MVC semi-annual events; the first was held in May and the second will be held in October. The second bonus point can be earned by undertaking a virtual site visit with the MVC Coordinating Center.

To date, the Coordinating Center has completed 26 site visits, and a further 25 “visits” are scheduled with a variety of hospitals around the state. During these 90-minute virtual visits, MVC provides an overview of the collaborative, our data, and engagement activities. Hospitals receive a quality improvement slide (Figure 1) in advance that they complete and return prior to their scheduled date. These responses drive the main discussion of the site visit.

Figure 1.

Much has been learned about various quality improvement projects being implemented and what hospitals are focusing on for 2021 and 2022. MVC plans to use the information from these slides to connect hospital members with peers interested in implementing similar projects.

In addition, the Coordinating Center is interested in learning: who is utilizing the registry and any individualized reports, the types of MVC data that are most useful, and any challenges hospitals have with using the data. This feedback will help MVC make improvements to the registry and individualized reports to make them more actionable for members.

Finally, the hospital relationship with physician organizations (POs) is discussed. One of MVC’s goals is to help facilitate collaboration between POs that have patients attributed to each hospital, especially in the patient outcomes and quality of care arenas.

If you have not yet scheduled a site visit, please do so here. Slots are available between now and October. If you have any questions or would like further information on a site visit, please contact the MVC Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.