Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is one of Maine’s standard health behavior surveillance systems, data from which informs policy development, program planning, and other public health interventions for chronic disease prevention. This project will assist the Maine BRFSS coordinator and the Maine CDC to achieve BRFSS objectives. Muskie School staff will update the BRFSS interactive web query as well as maintain multiple-year standardized datasets, add the most recent year of data, and update documentation. Muskie staff will also perform other analyses as necessary, including multivariate and trend analyses to help the Maine CDC better understand prevalence, risk factors and disease management for health behaviors and conditions (such as diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease) that impose a heavy burden on the residents of Maine and its health care system.
Established in 1992, the mission of the Maine Rural Health Research Center is to inform health care policy making and the delivery of rural health services through high quality, policy-relevant research, policy analysis and technical assistance on rural health issues of regional and national significance. The Center's core funding is provided by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
[article abstract]: In response to continuing concerns about escalating health care costs and poor quality care, many health plans have adopted a strategy called
This is the second of three papers synthesizing the ideas and practices of states as they seek to improve the quality of home and community based services (HCBS) and supports for older persons and persons with disabilities.
In 2003, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded grants to 19 states to enhance their quality management (QM) programs for HCBS programs. CMS contracted with the Community Living Exchange Collaborative to assist states in their grant activities by promoting information exchange and facilitating discussions on topics of common interest. As part of its work with the Community Living Exchange Collaborative, the Muskie School of Public Service, together with grantee states, identified three priority topics for working papers:
1. Quality Management (QM) Roles and Responsibilities
2. Discovery Methods for Remediation and Quality Improvement
3. Data Analysis and Use of Performance Measures
This paper will specifically address the following questions:
Why are discovery methods important?
What are the outcomes that discovery methods seek to assess?
What is a discovery method?
What are the features of a reliable and robust system of discovery methods?
What is a comprehensive yet focused system of discovery methods?
What evidence or other reports are produced from the discovery methods?
The objectives of this project were to document current quality management and improvement efforts across departments and programs, develop criteria for selecting areas for potential coordination or collaboration, select a collaborative project to improve the quality of care to persons with disabilities, and design and implement this project. The project chosen was in the area of serious event management. This report outlines the process of project selection, pre-design planning and system design for a reportable event system for aged and disabled populations.
More than 95,000 children are enrolled in MaineCare, the State?s Medicaid and SCHIP program, which provides health coverage to low-income children in the Maine. State and federal policymakers are interested in monitoring the health status of children in the MaineCare program and the quality of care they receive. The purpose of this project is to obtain consumer feedback about MaineCare services, to learn about the health status and health behaviors of this population, and to understand reasons parents disenrolled their children from MaineCare. Project staff will conduct a telephone survey of a sample of parents with children on MaineCare, including current enrollees, new enrollees, and disenrollees. Findings from the survey report will be used to improve understanding of the needs of children on MaineCare and to develop quality improvement initiatives.
Muskie staff will prepare a white paper summarizing the existing evidence on successful medication management strategies to help inform future grant-making by the Foundation and program implementation by current and future grantees. The summary will assess strategies that have been proven effective in improving adherence, optimizing therapeutic outcomes, reducing overuse of medications and improving appropriateness of drugs prescribed for uninsured and underinsured individuals. It will particularly focus on strategies focused on chronic care management and/or strategies employed to improve medication management during transitions in care from one setting to another.
The purpose of this project is to determine where and how tiered provider networks are utilized, to describe the characteristics of these networks, and to develop insights into strategies used by health plans when implementing and operating tiered provider networks. The concept underlying tiered networks is that health plans may be able to reduce costs and/or improve quality by directing consumers to certain providers and to avoid others. Unlike traditional HMO arrangements, tiered network plans typically allow members to access all providers, not just a subset. Through a variety of tactics, such as the disclosure of provider ?scores? as well as differential cost sharing arrangements, consumers are encouraged to shop for health care services among select and non-select providers.
In collaboration with Mercer Human Resource Consulting, a set of questions will be included in this firm?s 2005 web-based Survey of Employer Sponsored Health Plans. To answer questions that cannot be addressed with a structured response survey, site visits will be conducted, including personal interviews and focus groups, in five case study communities in which tiered provider networks are operational. Finally, to assess the direction and magnitude of changes occurring in tiered network programs, information derived from the analyses of 2005 survey results and site visits will be used to develop a refined set of tiered network questions for the 2006 Mercer survey.
Quality Counts
Maine Health Information Center (MHIC)
Maine Health Management Coalition (MHMC)
Abstract:
A recent systematic review found no studies of the impact of public performance reports on the quality of primary care. The proposed multi-method study will begin to fill that gap by exploring the relationship between health care performance reports, providers' responses to the reports, and the quality of care provided by primary care practices. Public performance reports can improve the quality of care by raising awareness among clinicians of evidence-based practices, encouraging providers to improve quality to maintain reputation and market share, directing patients to high-quality providers, or serving as the basis of pay-for-performance incentives. The study will focus on the first two mechanisms: raising awareness of evidence-based practices and encouraging providers to improve quality.
The study will explore the impact of an innovative and well-established statewide performance reporting system, The Maine Health Management Coalition
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