Quality of care, not quantity, is answer for health care reform

By Bill Leaver

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BOFEPET. A single word that unlocks a great mystery: What is the ideal way to deliver health care?

All right, technically BOFEPET is not a word. Nevertheless, it drives us. Our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers. It's what Iowa's clinics and hospitals are striving to achieve: Best Outcome for Every Patient Every Time.

On the eve of the anniversary of health care reform, we see it as an opportunity to create a new way to deliver on the promise of best outcomes. During the past year, we've developed innovations that bring down the cost of care while improving quality. For the first time, BOFEPET isn't a concept that we are pursuing despite bureaucratic barriers, it is a value we can express freely, because those barriers are falling.

We have advanced in many areas in light of health care reform.

l Empowering the patient-physician relationship: Iowa Health System cares for nearly one of every three patients in Iowa. We rely on a core team of professionals to ensure the greatest care for these patients. This means that our physicians must lead in the mission to strengthen patient trust. Last year, we launched the Physician Leadership Academy, an intensive program for our most qualified physicians to learn leadership and administration-level skills that will help us move from being hospital-driven to physician-led.

l Building technological bridges to the patient: We are placing wireless towers across the state to reach out to every Iowan.

l Lowering bureaucratic barriers: Historically, Medicare has reimbursed hospitals based on patient volume, not quality of care, penalizing high-quality care states like Iowa. That now can change under the health care reform.

l Providing greater wellness for the local community: With reform, compensation for care is more likely to reward providers for “best” care, rather than “most” care. In Fort Dodge and Des Moines, Iowa Health System is piloting coordinated-care payment reform models involving a variety of allied organizations - previously not encouraged to collaborate - that will improve the health of the local populations, enhance quality of health care services and reduce local health care costs. If successful, the programs will be repeated throughout Iowa Health System.

What do we hope to see in the next five years?

A simple-to-understand, wellness-centered experience for the patient, led by physicians with a renewed personal approach in a system that invigorates our work force to foster vibrant communities of people living at their healthiest.

The new regulations are less likely to hinder us in fulfilling our core duty: provide BOFEPET. Where health care reform goes from here, we can't say. We do know this: As long as the system affords health care providers the ability to deliver BOFEPET, it will become the one-word answer to health care reform.

Bill Leaver is president and CEO of Iowa Health System, the state's first and largest integrated health system. Comments: leaverblog@ihs.org.