5 short-term opportunities to incorporate preventive strategies into the healthcare delivery system

Preventive health strategies play an important role in healthcare reform, but can be difficult to integrate in the existing healthcare delivery system due the fee-for-service structure, fragmented evidence base on prevention and lack of cost metrics.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank launched by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, formed a Prevention Task Force to focus on ways to incorporate preventive strategies effectively.

Here are five near-term ways to include preventive strategies as part of delivery system reforms, according to a recent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center Prevention Task Force.

1. Population health quality measures should be included in CMS' next accountable care organization model to support care that reduces patient risk factors and manages chronic disease preventively.

2. CMS should establish specific guidelines for improving population health within the existing delivery-system infrastructure through an accountable health community model demonstration, according to the task force.

3. AHC models should be evaluated by CMS, including provisions and funds to identify relevant stakeholders, pinpoint shared outcomes, provide an integrator, address the issue of investments and savings made by or accruing to different entities and use technology to share data and support communication.

4. Infrastructure should be put in place to spread and scale successful models and analyze health and economic impacts. CMS should also require organizations to translate and disseminate findings in the RFP process, according to the task force.

5. Communities, public health officials and hospitals must also engage in the process, according to the task force. They can get involved by finding organizations to serve as integrators, improving Community Health Needs Assessments and using assessments as a tool to align goals and implementation strategies.

 

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