The Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) held its second virtual semi-annual meeting of 2021 on Friday, October 22nd. A total of 221 leaders from a variety of healthcare disciplines attended Friday’s virtual meeting, representing 70 different hospitals and 23 physician organizations (POs) from across the state of Michigan. These participants came together to hear about the planned adjustments to the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program for Program Year 2021 in light of COVID-19 and to discuss “the social risk and health equity dilemma” - a growing priority within the healthcare system generally, as well as within the MVC Coordinating Center.
MVC’s Director, Dr. Hari Nathan, started Friday’s meeting with an update from the MVC Coordinating Center, welcoming new collaborative members Munson Healthcare Manistee and Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital, and MVC’s newest Coordinating Center team members: Jana Stewart, Kristen Palframan, and Carla Novak. Dr. Nathan also highlighted some of the recent successes achieved by the Coordinating Center, including the launch of MVC’s new health equity report, increased custom analytic reporting, and the completion of over 50 virtual site visits with members this year.
Dr. Mike Thompson, MVC’s Co-Director, then shared information on the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program with attendees. In investigating the impact of COVID-19 throughout the state in 2020, 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. 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 team found that episodes of COVID-19 patients are generally more expensive than typical episodes. In addition, COVID-19 was not present in the baseline year of 2018 that hospitals stand to be evaluated against. Therefore, with approval from BCBSM, Dr. Thompson announced that, for Program Year 2021 only, the Coordinating Center will be removing 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 (see Figure 1). Looking ahead, a summary of participant selections for Program Years 2023 and 2024 were also shared, showing joint replacement as the most common condition selection, closely followed by congestive heart failure (CHF).
Figure 1. MVC Slide on Updates to MVC Component of BCBSM P4P Program for PY21
At MVC’s last semi-annual meeting in May, the Coordinating Center announced that Michigan Medicaid data had been added to MVC data sources and that the MVC Coordinating Center would be spending the subsequent months validating the data and getting it ready for member use. This work has now concluded and MVC’s Manager of Data Analytics shared what this new data source looks like. Michigan Medicaid now represents MVC’s third-largest data source, accounting for over 319,000 episodes since 2015, covering 256,889 beneficiaries, and making up 19.4% of all MVC episodes. With this new addition, MVC data sources now comprise over 80% of Michigan’s insured population, all of which are available for members to utilize on the MVC registry.
To set the scene for our guest speakers, MVC Analyst Bonnie Cheng provided an overview of MVC’s recent health equity report (see Figure 2), highlighting racial, ethnic, and dual-eligibility variation across Michigan. The MVC Coordinating Center will look to build on this new report and undertake new activities in this area to support member activity moving forward. This will be supported by the Michigan Social Health Interventions to Eliminate Disparities (MSHIELD) collaborative – a new group recently launched as part of the Collaborative Quality Initiative (CQI) portfolio. With this in mind, MVC was joined by MSHIELD Program Manager Carol Gray to introduce this new collaborative and describe how MSHIELD will seek to interface with the health system and local communities to drive change (see Figure 3).
Figure 2. MVC Slide on New MVC Health Equity Report
Figure 3. MSHIELD Slide on MSHIELD's Role as a CQI
After hearing from MSHIELD, MVC welcomed guest speaker Dr. Nicole J. Franklin from McLaren Flint hospital. Dr. Franklin provided insight as to how McLaren Flint has devoted time and effort to bridge the gap between health and social care. This placed particular emphasis on the use of six representative sub-committees (employee resource, patient outcomes, community outreach, employee education, talent acquisition, and cultural calendar) to achieve McLaren Flint’s commitment to creating an inclusive and equitable environment where everyone is valued and empowered for success. Representing the Integrated Health Association (IHA), Leah Corneail shared how IHA has worked to actively screen and address patient social influencers of health (SIOH). This emphasized the importance of collecting actionable data through IHA’s SIOH questionnaire and the use of these data through an interactive population health dashboard (see Figure 4). The last guest speaker of the day was Melissa Gary, Community Liaison for Great Lakes Physicians Organization (GLPO). As well as providing an overview of GLPO, Melissa detailed how the organization has used a social determinants of health questionnaire and monthly tracking log to address the needs of over 2000 patients in 2020 alone.
Figure 4. IHA Slide on Social Influencers of Health Dashboard
To conclude Friday’s meeting, MVC Communications Specialist Jana Stewart provided a synopsis of the day and highlighted key upcoming activities. The slides from Friday’s meeting are available here and a recording of the meeting is available here. If you have questions about anything that was discussed at the semi-annual or are interested in finding out more about MVC’s offerings, please reach out to the MVC Coordinating Center (michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com). In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you all in person again soon.
