National Business Group on health issues

Business Group Also Releases Position Paper on Health Care Reform

In its ongoing efforts to help improve the quality and safety of health care provided to U.S employees and their families, the National Business Group on Health today released a series of strong recommendations for employers, including one urging them to stop paying medical claims for avoidable medical errors.

The Business Group, which represents 250 large employers, also recommended employers require that all hospitals and health care systems in their preferred networks or that receive special financial incentives take specific measures to improve health care quality and safety.

ìThe measures weíre proposing include requiring hospitals and health plans to actively participate in health care quality and safety programs, having their senior leadership strongly committed to a culture of safety, and implementing health information technology,î says Harry Spencer, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Business Group, and Vice President, Global Benefits and HR Operations, Time Warner Inc. ìThe need for vast systemic improvement in the quality and safety of health care has never been greater.î

Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health, said: ìThere is an urgent need to protect patients and the lack of meaningful progress in improving safety and quality in the U.S. health system is frustrating to employers who can no longer afford to sustain rising and uncontrollable health care costs. To accelerate improvement, we adopted three specific recommendations for employers to provide incentives to hospitals to help bring about needed improvements.î

The first recommendation urges employers to stop paying for the most significant ìnever eventsî identified by the National Quality Forum. These include surgical events, such as wrong surgical procedures being performed, and care management events such as medication errors resulting in a patientís death or being seriously disabled.

ìThere is a groundswell of support at the state and national levels for hospitals and health plans to report medical errors,î said Ms. Darling. ìEmployers should not pay for so-called ënever eventsí and over the next six months, we will be working with health plans, providers, consumers and employers to develop methods for tracking and not paying for avoidable medical errors.î

The second recommendation, based on years of strong evidence from prestigious groups such as the Institute of Medicine and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, urges employers to require that the hospitals and health care systems in their preferred networks have top level Board and staff leadership unequivocally committed to a ìculture of safetyî to make improving health care safety and quality the highest priority. Employers should require them to actively participate in two ongoing projects ñ the 100,000 Lives Campaign, a program launched by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to avoid unnecessary deaths in U.S. hospitals, and the Surgical Care Improvement Project, whose goals are to reduce the incidence of surgical complications and mortality by 25 percent by the year 2010.

ìWe are seeing more employers and consumers wanting to know which hospitals are committed to having a culture of safety and which hospitals have a board of trustees and an executive leadership team on record as leading the fight to improve safety and quality,î says Darling. ìDemonstrating this commitment and being actively involved in reducing the number of medical errors will go a long way toward reducing avoidable deaths and suffering, controlling costs and making the health care system better.î

The final recommendation calls on employers to require that the hospitals and health care systems in their preferred networks implement health information technology, including electronic medical records and personal health records for all patients. The technology must meet the standards and requirements specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, based on the work of the American Health Information Community. Additionally, the technology systems should be designed to include e-prescribing, and connections to the personal health records that every consumer will have and be able to carry.

ìAdopting and using health information technology will reduce medical mistakes by making patient-specific information and the latest condition-specific information readily available to treating providers at the point of care,î said Ms. Darling. ìWe are rapidly approaching the time when health care organizations and providers must rely on information technology to be credible providers of safe, quality care.î

In addition to these recommendations, the Business Group has also published a white paper outlining its comprehensive position on reforming the U.S. health care system. Copies of the white paper are available at www.businessgrouphealth.org.