In the United States, disproportionate rates of chronic disease and illness are commonly documented among communities of color. National Minority Health Month (NMHM) takes place throughout April as a way to raise awareness about health disparities among minority groups and how racism and barriers to healthcare access have historically marginalized such groups. According to the CDC, health equity is “the state in which every individual has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health.” To achieve such a state, extensive efforts are necessary to address systematic injust ..read more

The Coordinating Center published its 2023 annual report to the MVC website recently. It outlines key successes and activities accomplished last year and the new strategy guiding MVC's 2024 efforts. Read the report below or view the PDF Parts A [LINK] and B [LINK]) now ..read more

This month the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) Coordinating Center distributed the final scorecards for Program Year (PY) 2023 of the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Program. The 2023 program year was the second year of a two-year cycle for which hospitals were evaluated using MVC data. Hospitals were scored on two conditions that they selected from seven options: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), colectomy, congestive heart failure (CHF), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), joint replacement, pneumonia, and spine surg ..read more

This month MVC hosted its first post-discharge follow-up workgroup presentation of the year, which featured a presentation by guest speaker Lisa Powell, MBA, PTA, Clinical Director of Operations of Sparrow Hospital. She shared insights from a recent Sparrow Hospital project launched to reduce readmissions and acute care utilization. The project came about when E.W. Sparrow Hospital identified that readmissions were a key driver of capacity limitations in the acute care setting and that Sparrow was underperforming compared to peers. After observing high readmission rates for their facility, S ..read more

The MVC Coordinating Center will soon distribute refreshed hospital-level versions of its push report utilizing emergency department-based episodes (“ED-based episodes”). MVC generated separate versions for acute care hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) with tailored comparison groups. In addition to reflecting more recent data across all included payers, these refreshed hospital-level reports differ from prior versions due to the addition of three high-volume ED conditions and the incorporation of Michigan Medicaid claims. Each page of the report is dedicated to a specific condit ..read more

BMC2 (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium) has been recognized with the prestigious John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award in the Local Level Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality category. BMC2 has been honored for its remarkable improvements in the documentation of radiation use, a decrease in high-dose radiation exposure, and reduction in opioid pill prescribing rates. BMC2 is a statewide quality improvement collaborative that develops and administers a portfolio of quality improvement interventions for patients who undergo heart stenting, vascular s ..read more

The Collaborative Quality Initiatives (CQIs) will be represented in this year’s Presidential Leadership Scholars (PLS) program, which invites 60 scholars to participate in a six-month, one-of-a-kind, bipartisan initiative focused on learning from the presidencies of George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson, and their administrations. Scholars are chosen from a highly competitive field and must undergo a rigorous application and review process. They are selected based on leadership growth potential and the strength of their personal leadership projects ..read more

I am a primary care physician, health economist and health policy researcher, and Assistant Professor of General Medicine at the University of Michigan. I’m excited to join the MVC team as a faculty advisor. My research uses large administrative and financial databases to examine the bidirectional relationship between health and financial outcomes for patients. I obtained my Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, and my M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2017. My doctoral dissertation demonstrated that the Affordable Ca ..read more

On Monday, organizations large and small will honor the work and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His work has continued to inspire the country on issues such as equality, discrimination, and systemic racism. As the MVC Coordinating Center approaches this national holiday, we reflect on the continued relevance of one of Dr. King’s famous quotations about healthcare injustices: "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.” Dr. King made this comment and others about healthcare discrimination in 1955, and yet almost 70 years later our healthcare sys ..read more

On behalf of the MVC Coordinating Center, I’d like to start by wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year! MVC had an outstanding 2023, which included celebrating our 10th anniversary and continued support of our hospital and physician organization members along with CQI partners. Throughout 2023, MVC welcomed three new hospital members to the collaborative, distributed 17 push reports, grew its analytic offerings by adding ED-based episodes of care, delivered 24 custom analytic requests, hosted 24 virtual workgroups across six focus areas, advanced both of its value coalition campaign ..read more