An annual research and education conference is a key component of the High Value Practice Academic Alliance, because of the importance of research in the transition to high value care. Best practice must be defined by data in conjunction with clinical expertise. Evaluation of outcomes ensures safety by confirming that cost-conscious care does not compromise our ability to diagnose and treat patients. Changing long-standing provider practice patterns has proven challenging, and we need to critically examine which interventions most effectively influence prescribing and ordering behavior. Patient acceptance of cost-conscious practice is another important area of investigation.
The inaugural National Research & Education Conference of the High Value Practice Academic Alliance, was held on October 8&9, 2017 in Baltimore, MD, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins and Johns Hopkins Medicine’s senior vice president for patient safety and quality, delivered the keynote address.
The annual conference is a highly informative program for anyone in the health care industry interested in safely improving health care value, including hospital leadership (CEO, CQO,CMO, CFO), medical providers (doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, house staff, medical students).
Five high value leaders spoke on their areas of expertise within high value care:
- Richard Duszak, MD, Professor and Vice Chair for Health Policy and Practice, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine:
- High Value Imaging: Perspectives from a Contrarian Radiologist
- Douglas Hough, PhD, medical economist and author of Irrationality in Health Care: What Behavioral Economics Reveals About What We Do and Why:
- Physician Behavioral Modification
- Chris Moriates, MD, Assistant Dean for Healthcare Value at Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin
- Building High-Value Care Bridges
- Rita Redberg, MD, Msc, Professor of Cardiology at UCSF, Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Internal Medicine, who created the “Less is More” column to promote high value practice
- How Less Health Care Can be Better for You: Examples from Internal Medicine
- Vikas Saini, MD, President of the Lown Institute, who convened the first major academic national conference focused on the problem of unnecessary care and created the Right Care Alliance.
- Providing the Right Care: A Systematic Framework
Abstracts describing high value quality improvement initiatives were delivered by podium or poster presentation, including 22 podium presentations and 100 Q/I posters from 44 medical centers in the US and Canada. Quality improvement highlights included:
- Reduction of unnecessary labs, imaging, transfusions, medications, telemetry and procedures, including a health system blood management initiative that decreased institutional costs by more than $2 million per year
- Medical and surgical care quality pathways associated with cost of care reduction
- Medication transition algorithms to reduce length of stay
- Interventions to expedite sepsis diagnosis, reduce length of stay and decrease readmissions
- Discharge transition initiatives, including results from the groundbreaking Myocardial Infarction Combined-Device Recovery Enhancement (MICORE) study, which uses smart devices to educate patients for discharge throughout their hospitalization and to monitor vitals, medications and activity after discharge
The conference program can be viewed here.
Educational curricula for medical students, residents and fellows from multiple academic medical centers were also presented as posters. The award winning curricula were selected by a panel of judges:
- Vineet Arora, MD, Assistant Dean for Scholarship and Discovery, Director of GME Clinical Learning Environment Innovation at University of Chicago Medicine , Costs of Care director & co-author of Understanding Value Based Healthcare.
- Belinda Chen, MD, Director of Programs in Curriculum Development at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
- Christopher Moriates, MD, Assistant Dean for Healthcare Value at University of Texas, Austin, Costs of Care director & co-author of Understanding Value Based Healthcare.
- Steven Rose, MD, Dean of the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education