06 Jan 2022
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MVC Coordinating Center Looking Back at 2021 and Forward to 2022

January 6, 2022 | 0 Comments | , ,

Let me begin the first MVC blog of 2022 by wishing you all a very happy new year on behalf of everyone at the MVC Coordinating Center. I’ve started my last two recaps with this line and ended with the hope of seeing you all in-person sometime soon. Since we still haven’t quite managed to get together in-person yet, I’d like to reiterate our thanks and gratitude to each of our collaborative members and those hospitals and physician organizations across the country who have continued to work tirelessly against the ongoing pandemic.

The MVC team has remained remote throughout 2021 and not only have we mastered the Zoom mute button, but we’ve continued to provide support to help MVC’s 100 hospital members and 40 physician organizations during this time.  In 2021, the MVC team held two virtual collaborative wide meetings, conducted 62 tailored registry webinars, undertook 58 virtual site visits, delivered 56 custom analytic requests, facilitated 34 workgroups, disseminated 21 push reports, and held five virtual regional networking events. As a result of this activity, the collaborative has welcomed 13 new hospital members to the collaborative.

In addition to these efforts, the MVC Coordinating Center has continued to adhere to our commitment to provide hospitals and POs with increased access to meaningful benchmarked performance data. In May of this year, MVC’s data portfolio grew with the addition of Michigan Medicaid data, and this was recently refreshed in early October. The data range for this data source currently covers 1/1/2015 – 9/30/2020, reflecting index admissions from 1/1/2015 – 6/30/2020. MVC Medicaid claims (Fee-for-Service and Managed Care) account for a total of 319,140 episodes (19.4% of all MVC episodes) and cover 256,889 beneficiaries. Overall, MVC data sources now comprise over 80% of Michigan’s insured population.

We look forward to continuing this growth in 2022 as we strive to improve the health of Michigan through sustainable high-value healthcare. There are a number of new developments in the pipeline for the coming year and I excited to be able to share some of these with you.

New Hospital Push Reports

A number of new reports will be added to MVC’s suite of reporting in 2022, focusing on topics such as COVID-19, Pneumonia, and Health Equity. The Coordinating Center will work closely with members, the wider CQI community, and other stakeholders to ensure the introduction of other new and novel approaches to sharing our data.

New Physician Organization Reporting

Driven by continued communication with members, the Coordinating Center disseminated its first PO-specific report focused on joint replacement towards the end of last year and has identified two new conditions of interest for future development (gastroenterology and hysterectomy). The Coordinating Center will also be working closely with PO members to inform the development of new metrics for the MVC online registry.

Increased Custom Analytics

Over the last year, the MVC team has devoted effort to raising awareness of MVC’s custom analytic offering to members. This has proved successful, with 56 custom projects undertaken for members in 2021 alone. This support will continue into 2022 – if you are interested in learning more, please contact the MVC Coordinating Center (michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com).

Emphasizing Equity in Healthcare

Most measures of overall health are worse in the US compared to any other developed country. The state of Michigan in particular ranks poorly in measures of population health, including tobacco use and the inter-related issues of inactivity, poor nutrition, and obesity. The relationship between these poor health behaviors and social determinants of health are closely interlinked and represent a huge opportunity to improve health and healthcare outcomes for targeted patients. In the coming year, MVC will be exploring how best to use its data and engagement platforms to emphasize equity in healthcare.

Collaborative Wide Meetings

The MVC team will continue to hold two flagship semi-annual collaborative wide meetings. These will take place on Friday, May 13th and on Friday, October 28th. The MVC team will also be holding five regional networking events throughout the year and plans to pilot a new ‘Northern Meeting’ in Summer 2022. More details to come.

New MVC Workgroups

The Coordinating Center’s suite of peer-to-peer virtual workgroups will continue to provide a highly accessible online platform for hospital and PO leaders to come together, collaborate, and share practices. In addition to MVC’s Chronic Disease Management, Sepsis, Joint, and Diabetes workgroups, two new groups will be added in 2022. This includes forums focused on ‘Health Equity’ and ‘Health in Action’.

As these activities and other planned developments come to fruition, we will be sure to share updates with you through our various engagement platforms. If you have any questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact the MVC Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com. Happy New Year, and we look forward to a great 2022 together.

13 May 2021
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MVC Semi-Annual Meeting May 2021 – Virtual Meeting Recap

MVC Semi-Annual Meeting May 2021 – Virtual Meeting Recap

May 13, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , , , ,

The Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) held its first virtual semi-annual meeting of 2021 on Friday, May 7th. A total of 221 leaders from a variety of healthcare disciplines attended Friday’s virtual meeting, representing 74 different hospitals and 30 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 BCBSM P4P Program for Program Years (PY) 2022/23 and to discuss variations in transitions of care and ED utilization practices across Michigan.

MVC’s Director, Dr. Hari Nathan, started Friday’s meeting with an update from the MVC Coordinating Center, welcoming the eleven new hospital members who have joined the collaborative since the turn of the year and highlighting recent improvements to MVC data sources and push reporting. This included the “soft launch” of Medicaid data. MVC has now added Medicaid data to our data portfolio, meaning that MVC data sources now comprise over 80% of Michigan’s insured population. The Coordinating Center is in the final stages of validation and will have this new data source live for use by members in the coming months.

Dr. Mike Thompson, MVC’s Co-Director, then shared information on the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program with attendees. An overview of PY20 was first provided, showing that participants earned an average of six points during this program year, an increase of around one point from the 2019 program year average. In an effort to continually improve the MVC Component, the Coordinating Center has introduced two methodological changes for the next two-year cycle (PY22 & PY23). Dr. Thompson walked through each of these changes, which include placing “Improvement” and “Achievement” on the same scoring scale, and introducing a new qualitative questionnaire for earning bonus points. The MVC Coordinating Center will be sharing further information on these changes and disseminating service line selection reports for the next program cycle with members in early June. Two dedicated P4P webinars will also be held around this time to assist members with selection.

Attention was then turned to looking at transition variations in Michigan hospitals, highlighting payment and ED utilization differences across MVC members, as well as the top reasons for readmission within the collaborative. To expand on this further, we were joined by guest speakers from the hospital, physician organization, and CQI setting to share their insights and learning. Dr. Robert Nolan and Michael Getty from Spectrum Health Lakeland were the first guest speakers of the day, discussing their organization’s efforts to reduce the cost of ED utilization and readmission rates. This highlighted the importance of real time data visuals, integrating documentation tools with best practices, and ensuring an effective longitudinal plan of care that is blended into natural work flows to enable physician buy-in. Dr. Nolan and Mike Getty were also able to spotlight the use of MVC data in these efforts, a custom option available to all MVC members.

Representing Professional Medical Corporation (PMC) and the Consortium of Independent Physician Associations (CIPA), Dr. Kyle Enger then shared how both entities have worked to promote appropriate emergency care in recent years. Again, this emphasized the importance of monthly data report cards to provide physicians with actionable data to guide activity, as well as the need to continue promoting urgent care as a viable alternative in certain situations. Our last guest speaker of the day was Dr. Keith Kocher, Director of the Michigan Emergency Department Improvement Collaborative (MEDIC). As well as providing a brief overview of the purpose of MEDIC and sharing some vital statistics relating to ED utilization across the US, Dr. Kocher discussed how best to approach the “ED readmission problem” and how local solutions can be used to minimize its impact.

To conclude Friday’s meeting, MVC’s Site Engagement Coordinator, Jeff Jameel, 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 can also be viewed here. If you have any questions on anything that was discussed at Friday’s semi-annual or are interested in finding out more about MVC’s offering, 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.

29 Apr 2021
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MVC Launches New Physician Organization Reports

April 29, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , ,

The goal of the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) is to improve the health of Michigan through sustainable high-value healthcare. The primary focus at inception in 2013 was the development of hospital based metrics to improve patient outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and encourage hospitals to collaborate in best practice sharing. With the knowledge that hospitals are not the healthcare entity capable of such changes, MVC invited Physician Organizations (POs) to join the collaborative towards the end of 2018.

To date, PO members have been able to see hospital level data for their attributed facilities. This has proved helpful for our PO members but we have heard consistent feedback that being able to view metrics that display a PO’s specific attributed patient population would be welcome. This value added request was appreciated by MVC, and so the Coordinating Center began a collaboration with representatives from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Physician Group Incentive Program (PGIP) to develop new PO patient specific metrics. MVC has also engaged other parties in the development of these new metrics, including the Michigan Data Collaborative (MDC) and hearing directly from our PO members.

As a result of this collaboration, the first MVC PO population level report, containing data for both BCBSM PPO Commercial (Comm) and BCBSM Medicare Advantage (MA) between 1/1/19 and 12/31/19, was sent out to all 40 MVC PO members on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. The report contains data on health care utilization and allows POs to benchmark themselves against all MVC participating physician organizations for the metrics listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Initial PO Reporting Metrics

Each metric was stratified by payer to account for differences in patient populations, as well as to serve as a proxy for age stratification (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Sample PO Metric: Percent of Attributed Members with at Least One Inpatient Stay

As engagement with our PO members builds, and further feedback and requests are processed, MVC plans to continue to build on the metrics highlighted in this report. As the most recent reports are at a population level, the Coordinating Center intends to delve further into the metrics for more granular level detail.

If you are interested in sharing feedback about the PO reports, have any specific analytic requests, and/or would like more information about the Michigan Value Collaborative,  please reach out to the Coordinating Center at michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

 

22 Apr 2021
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Long COVID-19, Just One Aftereffect of COVID-19

April 22, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , ,

With continued COVID-19 surges occurring worldwide despite the availability of a number of variations of vaccines, some patients continue to experience what is now being dubbed as “Long COVID-19” or “Post COVID-19 Syndrome”. Symptoms that are commonly experienced include a persistent cough, dyspnea, chest and/or joint pain, neuralgia, and headaches. These symptoms can last up to 12 weeks and in some cases, even longer. The more people that develop long COVID-19, the greater the strain on the healthcare system and need for appropriate diagnosis and treatment options.

A recent paper by A.V. Raveendran from January 2021 proposed diagnostic criteria to help confirm a diagnosis of long COVID-19. Depending on clinical symptomology, duration criteria and the presence or absence of a positive swab or antibodies, a long COVID-19 diagnosis can be categorized as confirmed, probable, possible or doubtful. Having an appropriate diagnosis will allow the practitioner to prescribe the relevant treatment plan.

In the United Kingdom, where the number of people exhibiting long COVID-19 continues to increase, a guideline has been developed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to provide recommendations to help identify, assess, and manage the effects. As more evidence is collected, the plan is to update the document on a continuous basis to maintain its validity. The guideline takes into consideration clinical symptomology, duration criteria, and the presence or absence of a positive SARS-Cov-2 test. It also provides guidelines for suggested referrals, and a plan of care with follow-up and monitoring.

While the guideline manual has many useful suggestions, there are a number of gaps where further detailed information will be needed.  As new information is discovered, the goal is to include comprehensive reviews of symptomology, and pathology of the disease process and a better understanding of the variation in impact. Simultaneously, there needs to be an increase in rehabilitation and community resources to allow for individualized evidenced based care for those suffering from the debilitating effects of long COVID-19.

The Michigan Value Collaborative continues to assess data related to COVID-19 and will be sharing a dedicated COVID-19 push report with members in the coming months. If you would like access to the MVC registry, please request it here or via email michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com

15 Apr 2021
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Cardiac Rehab Stakeholder Meeting Motivates Improvements in Care

April 15, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , ,

On Monday, March 22, 2021, a “stakeholder meeting” was hosted by the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) Coordinating Center with multiple key players in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) from around Michigan. As MVC has written about before, cardiac rehabilitation is a highly valuable but underutilized service and is the focus of one of MVC’s ongoing value coalition campaigns. The goal of the stakeholder meetings is to bring together key constituents to work towards solving the problem of underutilization. Attendees included managers of cardiac and pulmonary rehab facilities, quality improvement leaders and executives from  several MVC members, our payer partners from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and representatives from the Michigan Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons (MSTCVS), the Michigan Society for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehab (MSCVPR), and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium (BMC2).

The stakeholder meeting occurred the week after MVC distributed new Master Cardiac Rehab reports, which detail several metrics on cardiac rehabilitation after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), and surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) procedures. The collaborative-wide average cardiac rehab utilization varied by procedure: 52.6% for SAVR, 30.1% for TAVR, 56.3% for CABG, and 32.3% for PCI (see Figure 1). The mean days to first cardiac rehab visit also varied by procedure: 46 days for SAVR patients, 43 days for TAVR patients, 45 days for CABG patients, and 34 days for PCI patients (see Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

The Master Cardiac Rehab reports were also distributed by our partners at MSTCVS and BMC2. The aim is to increase awareness of hospital-level CR utilization and encourage as many players as possible (cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, cardiac rehab staff, quality improvement staff, and executive leadership) to work together to increase CR utilization at every hospital. These reports were well-received at the March 22nd stakeholder meeting, with one attendee emphasizing that the information contained in the reports was “the envy of other states,” speaking to the utility of MVC data and the success of BCBSM Value Partnerships. Attendees also provided excellent suggestions for improvement which will be taken into account during the next report refresh later this year.

The data is distributed, and the stakeholder meeting is over, but the value coalition campaign is just getting started.  There’s still a lot of work to do in order to equitably increase cardiac rehabilitation use in our state, including studying barriers to entry, exploring the intricacies of benefit design, and making various operational changes hospital by hospital, health system by health system. Nevertheless, that Monday afternoon showed that sometimes, when you have the right people around the same (virtual) table, everyone can walk away connected, motivated, and ready to carry out their respective roles to improve health care.

The next cardiac rehab stakeholder meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 28, 2021 from 4:00-5:00pm. If you have an interest in joining this group, or if you have not received your Master Cardiac Rehab report, please email michiganvaluecollaborative@gmail.com.

25 Mar 2021
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Reducing Admissions and Readmissions in the COPD Patient Population

March 25, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , , ,

At a recent MVC chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) workgroup, representatives from McLaren Physician Partners presented on their recent quality improvement initiative involving their COPD patient population. McLaren Physician Partners worked to identify areas for improvement within this specific patient population and found some common patient struggles consisted of higher utilization of the emergency department and in-patient settings, as well as higher readmission rates, specifically among their Medicare patients (38%). Five nurse managers were tasked with doing case reviews in order to identify possible areas for improvement. Five to ten patients that had three or more encounters in the last six months were taken from each nurse managers case load. Around 83% of those patients had other significant comorbidities (e.g. Diabetes Mellitus, Congestive Heart Failure, Hypertension.) Additionally, the reason for readmission was most often related to either respiratory insufficiency or a cancer treatment side effect.

Care managers then engaged the patients and went over a questionnaire with them. Approximately 68% of these patients had a misunderstanding of their medication, 26% had environmental barriers, 14% were not compliant with medication, and less than 15% reported an inability to afford medication/devices. Readmissions related to disease progression and inappropriate medication use were the major contributing factor to higher utilization of the in-patient setting and emergency department. Additionally, all admissions and readmissions were related to some form of respiratory insufficiency or a cancer treatment side effect.

Due to the time of implementation, COVID-19 impacted the type of intervention that could be put into place. McLaren Physician Partners opted to adopt a telephonic intervention in order to address education needs and remove barriers. Specific needs related to managing medications and compliance, triggers that led to an exacerbation, and developing a plan of action at the onset of first symptom were addressed. Additionally, the intervention sought to minimize and remove barriers where possible (e.g. cost of medications, transportation issues for visits). Lastly, a consideration was made if a patient was a candidate for palliative care.

Nurse navigators looked into possible ways to engage patients differently in order to hopefully prevent an exacerbation that caused an admission or a readmission. They were aware that what they were doing wasn't working, and needed some sort of upgrade. A toolkit was developed that was sent to the patient prior to a one to two-hour phone call scheduled in order to  help the patient understand this toolkit. The kit requires active participation and helps the patient develop specific goals and actions to take when they see signs of a potential exacerbation.

After implementation of this pilot program, all navigators came together to discuss their findings. Many things were noted, including the fact that patients did not know the difference between their inhalers (long-acting vs. rescue). Additionally, patients often didn't know that by identifying certain triggers, some symptoms may have been preventable. Of the patients who received and engaged in this telephonic intervention, the readmission rate for those who had been recently discharged decreased by more than 20%. Overall, McLaren Physician Partners saw a decrease in their hospitalizations due to the implementation of this program.

11 Mar 2021
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Michigan Value Collaborative Value Coalition Campaign. Introducing the Preoperative Testing VCC and Report Series.

March 11, 2021 | 0 Comments | , , ,

In 2020, the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) introduced the Preoperative Testing Value Coalition Campaign (VCC) with the aim of reducing the use of unnecessary preoperative testing for surgical procedures.  As part of this new campaign to improve quality, reduce cost, and improve the equity of care delivery in Michigan, the Coordinating Center developed and distributed preoperative testing reports to collaborative members earlier this week. The goal of these reports is to introduce the VCC and provide benchmarking data for some of the common preoperative tests to members.

Currently, the VCC is focused on three elective, outpatient, low-risk surgeries. This includes cholecystectomy, lumpectomy, and inguinal hernia repair. These surgeries were chosen to identify a population unlikely to require much, if any preoperative testing. Metrics included in the reports evaluate hospital testing rates for electrocardiography (EKG), trans-thoracic echocardiography (TTE), cardiac stress tests, chest X-ray (CXR), urinalysis, complete blood count (CBC), basic metabolic panel, coagulation tests, and pulmonary function tests (PFT).  As shown in Figure 1, there is wide variation across the collaborative for overall preoperative testing rates, ranging from 20% to 96%.

Whilst the report provides the MVC all and regional averages as benchmarks, the variation suggests that there is significant room for improvement among Michigan hospitals, and even facilities that are average likely have the possibility to reduce preoperative testing. Furthermore, to allow hospitals to identify areas of opportunity, a more granular grouping of laboratory testing including CBC, basic metabolic panel, coagulation tests, and urinalysis for the three low-risk surgeries is depicted in Figure 2.  To allow hospitals and physician organizations to view more comprehensive preoperative testing data, the MVC Coordinating Center is in the preliminary stages of developing a new preoperative testing report for the MVC registry.

Although many preoperative tests are relatively low cost, large-scale overuse when not necessary can increase episode costs. For these three low-risk procedures, an annual preoperative testing payment of $3.2 million dollars was noted in 2019 across MVC hospitals and according to MVC data, annual preoperative testing payments for these conditions has increased steadily over the last 5 years. In addition, overuse of preoperative testing has the potential to harm patients. Patients with borderline or false positive tests may be subjected to additional testing, have their surgeries postponed, or even experience unnecessary harm from invasive follow up tests.  Questions about appropriate preoperative testing  guidelines can be answered at the Choosing Wisely website.

Please provide us with your feedback on the utilization of these or any other MVC reports, or if you would be interested in joining the MVC Preoperative Testing Stakeholder Group, please reach out to MichiganValueCollaborative@gmail.com.

25 Feb 2021
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Opportunity to Share your Perspective in Institutional Participation in the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program

February 25, 2021 | 0 Comments | , ,

MVC Senior Advisor and former Director, Dr. Scott Regenbogen recently received funding from The Donoghue Foundation to lead a team of investigators to learn more about institutional participation in the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P Program.

As part of this study, Dr. Regenbogen is interested in conducting virtual interviews with lead administrators who were involved with selecting service lines for performance year 2017-2018

What is the value of participating? While participation in this study is completely voluntary and does not carry any bearing on P4P scoring, the insights gleaned from this work will help us to continue improving the MVC measure for the benefit of our members, and improve our understanding of successful strategies in commercial episode-based payment incentives.

What is The Donoghue Foundation? The Foundation supports a diverse portfolio of research projects, from understanding the mechanisms of disease, to improving clinical treatments, to public health initiatives that prevent illness – all founded on excellent science. To learn more about the organization and their mission, please visit https://donaghue.org/

Meet the Key Study Personnel

  • Scott Regenbogen, MD, MPH.  Dr. Regenbogen is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Colorectal Surgery at the University of Michigan (UM), and a Senior Advisor of the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC). His research has focused on the role of perioperative care protocols in the costs, outcomes, and value of care around episodes of inpatient surgery, with a particular focus on older adults.
  • Shelytia Cocroft, PhD.  Dr. Cocroft is an applied medical sociologist and mixed-methodologist (qualitative and quantitative research designs).  She is currently a qualitative research analyst at the University of Michigan’s Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy (CHOP) and is collaborating on qualitative centric projects designed to identify systemic and structural mechanisms within surgical care that perpetuate inequalities in access, quality, and delivery of care.
  • Ashley Duby, MS.  Ms. Duby is the Research Director for the Division of Colorectal Surgery within the Department of Surgery and has been working with Dr. Regenbogen for the past 6 years. She has extensive experience in development and deployment of fieldwork protocols in diverse settings – including patient and provider populations.

If you have any questions or would like further information related to this project, please contact Ashley Duby, Research Director at agay@med.umich.edu.