DorlandHealth

When Coordinating Care Isn’t Enough

Coordinating care for patients continues to grow more and more complex. With health care reform officially signed into law and transparency an increasingly popular topic, it’s necessary not only to help patients navigate our complicated health care system but to be able to provide concrete data showing improved outcomes as well. Care managers want to improve the delivery of care, while health insurance plans want to add value to available services. But how can either of these be accomplished without tangible evidence demonstrating how members are truly benefiting from care management?

This article shows how one health insurance plan has found a way to address this challenge. BlueCross and BlueShield of Kansas City (Blue KC) has teamed up with i3 QualityMetric, an organization that measures and analyzes outcomes, to integrate more comprehensive outcomes measurement into member care.

Analyzing Electrotherapeutic Options for Managing and Controlling Pain

Exploring viable alternatives to opiates, barbiturates and NSAIDs in managing acute and chronic pain has become a national priority. Concern about managing pain is highlighted by the recent National Pain Care Policy Act of 2009 (FN1) requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to seek an agreement with the Institute of Medicine to convene a conference on pain to:

1) Increase the recognition of pain as a significant public health problem in the United States; 2) Evaluate the adequacy of assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and management of acute and chronic pain; 3) Identify barriers to appropriate pain care; and 4) Establish an agenda to reduce such barriers and significantly improve the national state of pain care research, education and clinical care.

This bill amended the Public Health Service Act and required the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue to expand, through the Pain Consortium, an aggressive program of basic and clinical research on the causes of and potential treatments for pain. Further, it requires the Pain Consortium to develop and make recommendations on appropriate pain research initiatives. It also mandates education and training for health care professionals in pain care and the implementation of a national pain care education outreach and awareness campaign to educate consumers, patients, their families and other caregivers. This has spawned a powerful emerging interest in alternatives to pharmacotherapy in managing and treating pain.