Thousands of Pennsylvanians receive medical services every day from local health care systems. Each of these facilities has its own physicians and practitioners with their own specialized knowledge gained from their own experience providing care. But what if they came together to compare notes? What if they shared what they know about what works best for patients? What if, cooperatively, they focused on improving specific categories of care?
That is exactly the purpose of a new collaborative brought together by Capital BlueCross and the Health Care Improvement Foundation (HCIF). A first-of-its-kind for the central Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley regions, the collaborative is focusing on improving health care safety, outcomes, and the overall patient experience by zeroing in on one important health initiative at a time.
The first area of focus that the collaborative’s health care system participants have agreed to work on with Capital BlueCross and HCIF is palliative care.
The aim of the collaborative is to advance the care and support of patients with advanced illness and their families across the region. Over the course of the collaborative, organizations will work together to improve the awareness and use of POLST (Pennsylvania Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) by promoting advanced care planning conversations between health care providers and patients with advanced illness and their families, fostering shared decision-making about individualized goals of care, and ensuring the implementation of individualized health care goals across care settings.
A Regional Palliative Care Steering Committee is being formed to provide input into collaborative goals, metrics, and the curriculum for an in-person conference this fall. The committee will continue to work together to ensure that program activities best support participating organizations and that patient outcomes are met and sustained.
Success of the initiative will be monitored and measured by the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance. The Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance is a non-profit that seeks to improve the quality of patient health through alliances between hospitals, physicians, health plans and other stakeholders who are dedicated to promoting responsible public reporting of health care information. More information can be found at www.pahealthcarequality.org.