24 Sep 2025
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Fall Collaborative-Wide Meeting Agenda, Speakers Announced

Fall Collaborative-Wide Meeting Agenda, Speakers Announced

September 24, 2025 | 0 Comments | , , ,

The MVC Coordinating Center is excited to announce the agenda for its fall collaborative-wide meeting on Fri., Oct. 10, 2025, from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., at the Vistatech Center in Livonia, MI. This meeting’s theme is “Adapting Together in 2025 and Beyond: High-Value Care for All in a Changing Landscape.” This meeting will highlight the various ways in which MVC's members identify gaps in outcomes, adapt to ensure all patients receive the highest quality care, and establish partnerships and programs that mitigate non-medical drivers of health outcomes. Those interested in attending MVC's fall 2025 collaborative-wide meeting must register here by Thurs., Sept. 25.

MVC Director Mark Bradshaw, MSc, will kick off the day with Coordinating Center updates as well as announcements about the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program. This will be followed by updates about 2026 engagement offerings presented by MVC Engagement Manager Jessica Souva, MSN, RN, C-ONQS.

MVC will then invite its first guest speakers of the day to the podium: Julia Weinert, MPH, MSHIELD Program Manager, and Brad Iott, PhD, MPH, MSHIELD Content Expert in Health Informatics and Social Care Integration. The MSHIELD team will lay the foundation for the day by discussing non-medical drivers of health and related implications for quality improvement teams, including examples of metrics that help evaluate care across all patients and interventions that can help reduce gaps in patient outcomes.

The event keynote will follow with a presentation by Gloria Rey, PA-C, MPH, Director of Post-Acute Care, Henry Ford Health. She will present on Henry Ford’s post-acute care (PAC) transition program, and the ways in which their team partners with PAC groups to ensure effective, individualized handoffs and care delivery for all patients.

Following lunch and networking, MVC Medical Director Hari Nathan, MD, PhD, will co-present with MVC Analyst Kushbu Narender Singh, MDS, MPH, for MVC’s Data in Action presentation. This data presentation will focus on MVC’s newest health outcome variation measure, including how it was developed, its use cases and benefits, a timeline for related data sharing, and unblinded data. This measure was a new addition to the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program, with scoring on this measure beginning in Program Years 2026-2027.

Attendees will then transition into the afternoon breakout sessions, all led by guest hospital presenters. To showcase how members are addressing variation in outcomes, MVC invited presenters to discuss recent initiatives and successes across a range of focus areas, such as partnerships with community-based organizations, systematic approaches to referrals, and predictive analytics and assessment tools in EPIC. View a summary of all five breakout presentations here. Attendees will attend two breakout sessions before returning to the main ballroom for closing remarks and next steps.

The deadline to register for MVC’s fall 2025 collaborative-wide meeting is tomorrow, Sept. 25. We look forward to seeing you there!

10 Sep 2025
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Push Report Details New MVC Measure that Quantifies Gaps in Patient Outcomes

Push Report Details New MVC Measure that Quantifies Gaps in Patient Outcomes

September 10, 2025 | 0 Comments | , , , ,

MVC distributed a new push report on Aug. 28, highlighting the components and methods for MVC’s newest measure: health outcome variation for all-cause readmissions. The goals of the recently distributed push reports are to familiarize hospital members with the measure methodology as well as provide a first look at their hospital’s performance.

This measure was developed with the goal of addressing common challenges by MVC’s members in identifying and addressing gaps in health outcomes within their patient populations. A survey distributed to the MVC collaborative in 2024 identified barriers such as insufficient data and insufficient financial investments as key causes for lingering variation across their patient population. With the introduction of MVC’s health outcome variation measure, MVC seeks to quantify the magnitude of hospital-level variation in all-cause readmission rates between payer groups using an index of variation calculation. Readmission rates are risk adjusted for patient demographic and comorbidity data, as well as for non-medical drivers of health.

The first two pages of the push report provide a step-by-step walkthrough of the index calculation, beginning with the calculation of absolute differences in hospital-level readmission rates by payer group compared to the hospital-level average readmission rate. The five payer groups included in these calculations are BCBSM and BCN Commercial, BCBSM and BCN Medicare Advantage, Medicaid only, Medicare FFS only, and patients dual-eligible for Medicaid and Medicare; dual-eligible patients have been pulled out of the Medicaid only and Medicare only categories. This initial step helps to highlight which payer group(s) have a higher readmission rate than the hospital’s average rate (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The next step in the methodology is to calculate a hospital’s index of variation using absolute differences in payer-specific risk-adjusted readmission rates compared to the hospital’s risk-adjusted average readmission rate. These payer-specific absolute differences are multiplied by the respective payer population proportion to yield weighted differences (Figure 2). The sum of those weighted differences across all five payer groups yields the hospital’s index of variation. This index calculation indicates the magnitude of payer-specific differences in risk-adjusted readmission rates within a hospital. A higher value indicates a larger spread in a hospital’s payer-specific risk-adjusted readmission rates as well as opportunities to develop strategies that reduce gaps in care across patient groups. A lower value is desired and indicates less variation in a hospital’s risk-adjusted readmission rates across payers.

Figure 2.

MVC first announced this measure at its fall 2024 collaborative-wide meeting, where Senior Advisor Jim Dupree, MD, MPH, announced its inclusion in the next cycle of the MVC Component of the BCBSM Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program. Scoring on this measure will be offered in the Program Year (PY) 2025 scorecards with no points attached and thereafter will be worth one point in the PY 2026-2027 cycle.

Similar index or composite measures have been utilized by other health organizations, and MVC’s risk-adjusted measure can help identify hospital-level preventable differences in readmissions. Hospitals will earn the health outcome variation point by improving relative to their own baseline index or by performing well relative to their peers (i.e., having an index at or below the collaborative-wide median index).

As hospitals review their provided push report and become familiar with this new health outcome variation measure, they are encouraged to reach out to MVC with any questions.