PQA || 2011 Annual Meeting

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PQA Meetings - Annual Meeting 2011

Record Breaking Attendance at the PQA 6th Annual Meeting

Over 225 healthcare leaders joined together at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC on June 1-2 to kick off PQA’s celebration of “Five Years of Quality.” The full agenda included thought leaders in healthcare, a select number of exhibitors with both high tech and high touch services, and the inaugural PQA Quality Awards Program and Dinner. The thought provoking and educational meeting provided tremendous take home value.

Laura Cranston, PQA’s Executive Director of PQA since it’s founding in 2006, helped kick off the meeting with a review of the Alliance’s accomplishments along with a look at the work PQA will undertake in the future. She thanked the PQA members for their dedicated efforts within PQA’s workgroups, for their time spent on developing measure concepts and weighing-in on important issues facing PQA stakeholders. The enthusiasm and engagement of PQA members is demonstrated daily and on every workgroup call as they strive to improve the quality of medication use and mediation-related healthcare outcomes.

Opening keynote speaker Dr. Kavita Patel, Managing Director for Clinical Transformation and Delivery, Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, provided the audience with a look at “Health Care Reform: ACO, PCMH, HIE & The Role for PQA”. Dr. Patel described the emergence of ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations), their anticipated role in improving overall healthcare outcomes and lowering healthcare costs, and the key challenges and opportunities for pharmacy for engaging with ACOs.

Vikki Oates, Director of the Division of Clinical and Operational Performance, Medicare Drug Benefit, and Part C&D Data Group for CMS, provided an in-depth look at the Medicare Plan Ratings, Display Measures and Quality-Based Payments. Her presentation was followed by a panel discussion where top executives from Humana, Kaiser Permanente and Medco commented on how the CMS ratings and payment reform are affecting their business and their strategies to address the challenges they face.

Other highlights of the meeting included lessons learned from physicians and hospitals around pay for performance programs. An update was provide about the National Quality Forum’s Measure Application Partnership (MAP). The PQA membership also reviewed, discussed and voted on three specific medication measures that were proposed for endorsement.

The PQA workgroup breakout sessions were back for a second year. The sessions brought together members of the various workgroups to share their major objectives for the year. Those in attendance at the meeting who were not part of the 2011 workgroups learned about the PQA Phase II Demonstration Project currently taking place in Pennsylvania. Spokespersons from CECity, Rite Aid and Highmark gave a firsthand look at the goals and accomplishments of this project.

PQA Awards Dinner

A highlight of the meeting was the inaugural PQA Quality Awards Program where PQA recognized three health plans for excellence in Medication Safety based on CMS’ Star Ratings. The winners were CalOptima’s One Care Plan, Kaiser Permanente Colorado and Kaiser Permanente Hawaii. This award recognizes their achievement of a 5-star rating on the PQA measures of medication safety that are included in the CMS Star Rating Program. The awardees were also required to achieve at least a four-star plan rating overall.

The keynote speaker during the dinner event was Jonathan Blum, Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare. In his address, Director Blum shared with the attendees, that the accomplishments of these three Medicare plans were judged based on their publicly available quality scores. Blum emphasized that, “The safe use of medications is extremely important to the Medicare program and we commend these award winners for their achievements in ensuring safety for their Medicare members. PQA has set a high standard for excellence in their criteria for this award thereby ensuring that the award recipients are truly outstanding in their protection of patients and promotion of optimal medication outcomes.”

Click on the pictures of the meeting and dinner below to view full size: