Health Quality Partners
Health Quality Partners (HQP) is a not-for-profit health care quality research and development organization dedicated to improving population health outcomes through health system redesign and advanced care coordination.

Ken Coburn, MD, MPH, CEO and Medical Director , 267-880-1733 www.hqp2.org

Health Quality Partners was founded in 2001. At its core is a team of people who had worked together for years in a variety of health care delivery settings as part of either quality, medical management, disease management, or case management divisions. The impetus for health systems to create such units in the 1990's in eastern PA was to manage capitated risk contracts with health plans by applying a population-based approach to preventive care, health risk monitoring and targeted early intervention.

A program designed by Health Quality Partners to help chronically ill Medicare patients manage their diseases and improve their health was acknowledged in the Feb. 11, 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association as one of two successful efforts in a national demonstration sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Changing patient behaviors, improving their health outcome and generating savings are the great challenges facing the healthcare reform movement,” said Kenneth D. Coburn, MD, MPH, president and CEO of Health Quality Partners. “We certainly haven’t solved all those challenges but we’ve shown that significant improvement is possible.”

Health Quality Partners followed approximately 1,400 patients, half in an intervention group and half in a control group. The JAMA study found that overall, for their total population, Health Quality Partners intervention group costs were 12% lower than the control group, with savings of approximately 20% and a reduction of hospitalizations of 29% among patients with the highest severity, in addition to better health outcomes.

Key to the unique success of the program was Health Quality Partners’ close collaboration with approximately 65 primary care physician practices and four hospitals in Southeastern Pennsylvania for coordination of care, and in-person education and counseling for the intervention group provided by highly trained HQP Nurse Care Managers. Doylestown Hospital and its independent physicians provided care to a core group of patients in the program that spanned an area from the Lehigh Valley to Central Bucks County. “Face-to-face contact was an important feature in the program, and the JAMA article noted its effect on developing trust between the patient and nurse, and creating an environment that both encouraged and sustained the patient on his or her journey to improved health,” Dr. Coburn said.

Nurse contacts with patients in the intervention group included individual consultations either in their homes or in a physician’s office, and group meetings to counsel patients with similar diseases and to provide additional support and lifestyle behavior change interventions to the individual patient. “We are very hopeful that the continuing work over the next 12 to 18 months will solidify JAMA’s finding on the success of our program, and create a further impetus to refine chronic care models and improve efficiency and outcomes,” Dr. Coburn added.