Frontiers of Health Services Management - Summer 2014 - (Page 52)

outcomes. We have had the opportunity to develop protocols; build medical home models (rosenberg et al. 2012) and shared savings approaches with our primary care physicians; experiment with bundled payments; build rural health homes for seriously mentally ill individuals (open Minds 2014); and improve methods to support the frail elderly and high-risk youth. We are also a large employer, with 65,000 employees, and our staff has participated in the UPMc MyHealth Program for nearly a decade. We have used a variety of engagement methods As a provider-owned and health plan benefit health plan, we are able designs to encourage our to translate the strategies employees to adopt and/or maintain healthy behavior. we used with our own More than 95 percent of employees to the packages employees complete an we offer to the employers in annual health risk assessment, and more than our service area. 90 percent participate in the take a Healthy Step program to earn incentives for improving their health. We assist our employees through on-site health clinics supported by our telemedicine program; provide worksite weight and smoking cessation programs; and recently launched UPMc anywhere care, which allows employees and their families to access healthcare through an online portal without leaving their home or worksite. our employee group health and workers' compensation costs are consistently and significantly below industry averages, and we have been recognized by the national Business group on Health as a Platinum award Winner for our employee health and wellness programs for five consecutive years (Parkinson et al., in press). as a provider-owned health plan, we are able to translate the strategies we used with our own employees to the packages we offer to the employers in our service area. We have partnered with local employers to bring the UPMc MyHealth Program to them using the employer Health and Productivity roadmap™ Strategy, as depicted in exhibit 1 (Parkinson 2013). at this point, we serve approximately 10,000 regional employers in our market. for the care needed to ensure the wellbeing of our most complex members, we find that traditional medical approaches are insufficient. complicated social needs, coupled with unhealthy and unsafe environments or a lack of community support, bring many people to the emergency department and hospital as much as, if not more than, their medical condition. to combat these underlying issues, aligning medical services, social services, and community support is essential. for example, in one of our geographic regions, we noted a significantly higher rate of preterm births for our Medicaid members than for our other populations. the UcMP Health Plan partnered with obstetrics/gynecology services in the area to support a doula program for these women, who were mostly teens and young adults. the doula became the "grandmother" to women who might be lacking such a figure in their lives. a trained layperson, the doula goes to the home to help the young women access prenatal care, helps them find smoking cessation programs as needed, provides support and education, becomes a labor coach if the women wish it, and visits for six months following delivery. through our work with 1.2 million Medicare, Medicaid, Behavioral Health, and Special needs Plan members, we learned "it takes a village" to help high-risk individuals improve clinical outcomes and simultaneously control their healthcare expenditures. the Health Plan partnership programs are highly customized for the 52 * f ro ntier s o f h ea lt h s e rvic e s m a na g e me nt 30 :4

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Frontiers of Health Services Management - Summer 2014

Table of Contents

Frontiers of Health Services Management - Summer 2014