One of the biggest challenges facing health care today is measuring, improving and rewarding health care quality. Governor Pawlenty today announced that Minnesota has received a grant from the National Governors Association (NGA) that will allow the state to continue building on its efforts to address this challenge.

"Health care purchasers want to know that they are getting the best value for their dollar," Governor Pawlenty said. "Quality does impact the cost of health care. That's why we must continue to focus on health care quality and improved information."

The Midwest Business Group on Health, one of the nation's leading coalitions of private and public employers, estimates that 30 percent of all direct health care expenditures are the result of poor quality care.  That translates to $420 billion spent each year nationally - $9.12 billion in Minnesota - as a result of poor quality care.

Minnesota is one of only eight states to receive a health care quality improvement grant from the NGA. The grant will serve as a catalyst to move the state one step closer toward rewarding high-quality care and quality improvement.

The Minnesota group will participate in the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices Policy Academy on Health Care Quality Improvement. The goal of the policy academy is to assist states in developing comprehensive initiatives to improve, track and measure health care delivery and health outcomes.

At the academy meeting - to be held June 14-16, 2006, in Berkeley, California - teams of state policymakers from the public and private sector will meet with national experts to develop customized strategies for targeted health care quality improvement initiatives. 

The work group expects to complete its work within a year and will focus on:

·        Agreeing on specific goals for health care quality measurement and improvement.

·        Creating a method for selecting and agreeing on specific measures of health care quality and standard ways of measuring quality.

·        Transforming Minnesota's health care delivery and payment systems to reward high quality care and quality improvement.

 
The group will be led by Minnesota Commissioner of Employee Relations Cal Ludeman, chair of the Governor's Health Cabinet. Other members of the group will include:

·        Carolyn Jones, Health Policy Advisor to Governor Pawlenty.

·        Dianne Mandernach, Minnesota Commissioner of Health. 

·        Senator Linda Berglin (DFL-Minneapolis), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee's Health and Human Services Budget Division and member of the Senate Health and Family Security Committee. 

·        Representative Tim Wilkin (R-Eagan), Assistant Majority Leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives, chair of the House Committee on Commerce and Financial Institutions, and a member of the Committee on Heath Policy and Finance. 

·        Dr. George Isham, Chief Health Office and Medical Director at HealthPartners

·        Timothy Hanson, President and CEO of the HealthEast Care System.

·        Dr. Douglas Wood, cardiologist practicing at the Mayo Clinic.

·        Lori Larson, manager of health care purchasing for 3M Corporation.

·        Scott Leitz, director of the Office of Health Policy, Statistics and Informatics at the Minnesota Department of Health. 

 
The NGA effort builds on current initiatives to measure health care quality in Minnesota:

·        Governor Pawlenty's Health Cabinet unveiled a new state website that provides consumers with information on health care costs and quality in Minnesota.  The website - www.minnesotahealthinfo.org - makes it easier to find information about health care quality using objective and reliable sources of information. 

·        Minnesota leads the country in a collaborative approach between health plans, medical groups, physicians, patients, and employers working together through MN Community Measurement. The mission is to accelerate the improvement of health by publicly reporting health care information. Consumers find accurate, comparative details on the quality of care at Minnesota's provider groups.

·        An online tool is now available for Minnesota consumers to compare quality of life and resident satisfaction at the state's 396 Medical Assistance certified nursing homes. The Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card is the first of its kind in the nation to provide objective data such as hours of direct care, staff turnover, proportion of single rooms and state inspection results on individual nursing homes. Each nursing home can receive one to five stars on each measure.

·        Governor Pawlenty launched the Smart Buy Alliance - a unique public-private partnership of health care purchasers in Minnesota. Members of the Alliance include organizations that purchase health care on behalf of over 60 percent of Minnesotans, and include government purchasers, large employers, small employers, and labor unions.  One of the Alliance's goals is to adopt uniform methods of measuring quality of care and results and to purchase health care based on those measurements.