Center for Health Value Innovation to Aid Employer-Sponsored Benefit Designs to Support Battle Creek, Michigan Healthcare Initiatives

The Center for Health Value Information (www.vbhealth.org), the nation’s premier organization dedicated to establishing value and producing evidence for sustainable health and financial improvement, lauds the area healthcare initiative and ongoing collaboration in Battle Creek, Mich., which brings together consumers, employers, health plans, and physicians to improve clinical outcomes and the health of the community while reducing healthcare costs. In order to keep the city’s positive momentum going, the Center will partner with Battle Creek stakeholders to bring a value-based framework from which the employer/employee relationship can strengthen the Battle Creek initiative’s already-successful medical home model.

Cyndy Nayer, president of The Center for Health Value Innovation, explains: “The Center’s blueprint for value-based design calls for removal of access barriers and lowering of co-insurance on certain services and sharing of incentives and rewards. The Center’s model, overlays the community’s patient-centered collaborative medical home model. The innovative work underway in Battle Creek provides a model for communities nationwide and will serve as solid evidence of financial and healthcare improvements for incentive-based design.”

The 2006 patient-centered primary care model in Battle Creek, Pathways to Health, provided a central, focused effort on chronic disease management by considering the patient, the primary condition (such as diabetes), and the co-morbid conditions (such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol), while managing the total patient for improved outcomes. The collaborative was and continues to stay focused on creating and supporting the team approach for improving the care process at the physician office level.

Working by consensus, multiple stakeholders in Battle Creek have formed consumer and employer advisory councils, asking each participating group to understand its part in the healthcare process in order to eliminate barriers to care.

The Center’s value-based design input will identify emerging and modifiable risks in order to remove access barriers and teach the multiple stakeholders how to lower all risks. Once identified, those patients who do not get early screenings, preventive or ongoing care for their conditions, or who do not fill prescriptions correctly or get their labs on time, will receive focused incentives such as some or all of the following:

— reduced co-pays for labs/exams and treatment

— tailored Web or telephone messages

— diabetes education

— nutrition counseling

“Basically, we’re going to offer choices to help people change,” Nayer adds. “When people change, they improve their self-management, and they usually reduce their use of health resources such as emergency room visits or unscheduled absences from work–which relieves the health plan/employer of unnecessary health spending. Improved self-management also cuts escalating out-of-pocket spending and relieves the physician/office of unnecessary resource use. Everybody wins when everybody is accountable and responsible for the better outcomes.”

Currently, the Center is working closely with employer groups in Battle Creek, such as Kellogg Company, the Kellogg Foundation, the Battle Creek Health System, the City of Battle Creek and Integrated Health Partners to further value-based health designs.

“This total team effort has the potential to render positive results in our community by cutting health costs and improving employee health,” says Jennifer Peattie, human resources specialist for the Kellogg Foundation.

Ken Tsuchiyama, city manager for the City of Battle Creek, advocates these healthcare innovations: “Michigan has suffered a rising prevalence of high-cost chronic disease, and the management of chronic care diseases has become a major component of primary healthcare. By giving its patients a level of responsibility, the value-based collaborative makes them feel very much a part of the process. As a result, we’ve seen progress in every area. In fact, some of the early outcomes show great promise.”

Pat Garrett, CEO of Battle Creek Health System, adds, “Clearly, we are moving in the right direction with value-based design. Our vision was to act as a change agent by gaining a better understanding of emerging healthcare needs and developing an integrated healthcare delivery system through the improved use of information technology. With this pioneering strategy, everyone has a stake and everyone wins.”

About The Center for Health Value Innovation

Launched in 2007, The Center for Health Value Innovation is a not-for-profit (501c3) organization representing industry stakeholders committed to sharing the evidence that value-based health designs improve health status and reduce health cost inflation. Members include large and mid-size employers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, self-funded unions, municipal and state governments, medical management firms, pharmacy benefits management companies, vendor organizations and others which benefit from analytic tools, educational programs and collaborative connections to innovators in value-based health design. Visit www.vbhealth.org.