This is a reminder to those who are available that on Thursday February 28th at 11:00am EST we will hold a call for the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative. Welcome to those who are on the list for the first time this week. Please forward this on to anyone we may have omitted.

Thursday, February 28th, 11:00 am Eastern

Call in number: 641.715.3200
Passcode: 421814#

Please mute your telephone unless you are speaking. We have had some issues with background noise causing interference with the sound quality of our calls recently due to the growing numbers of participants on these conference calls.

Please find a draft agenda below, and if you have any items to include please just reply to this email.

2008 PCPCC Meetings

The meeting dates for the Collaborative for 2008 are below:

* Wednesday, April 16, 2008 in Washington, DC – this meeting will be held at the International Trade Center, Ronald Regan Building in Washington, DC
* Wednesday, July 16, 2008 in Washington, DC
* Wednesday, October 8, 2008 in Washington, DC (Summit)

Proposed Agenda for April 16th will be released soon. Send in any ideas!

Inclusion of the Medical Home Concept in Health Reform Efforts

One of the major projects PCPCC staff is engaged in at the moment is meeting with advocates of various health reform proposals in this election year, and discussing the role the Medical Home might play in those proposals. This includes meeting with a variety of organizations and advocates, including:

* Employer Trade Associations such as HR Policy Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Business Round Table, and the ERISA Industry Committee;
* Think Tanks such as The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, The New America Foundation, The Urban Institute, The Hudson Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute;
* Presidential Candidates;
* Plans developed by Congressional representatives: The Healthy Americans Act sponsored by Senators Wyden and Bennet, H.R.5348 introduced by Representatives Langevin and Shays, or Representative Pete Stark;
* Midwest Regional Reform Effort – 8 states; each state has a group and there is a Regional Group.

Collaborative staff are currently working on a draft one page insert for the inclusion of the Patient Centered Medical Home language into these health reform packages. For those interested in participating the creation of this insert document please contact Edwina Rogers (erogers@eric.org).

Meetings

Completed

· HRPA – January 7, 2008

· The Jeffersonian Health Policy Foundation – January 14, 2008

· Michael J. Correia, American Legislative Exchange Council – Jan. 23, 2008

· Bob Moffit and Nina Owcharenko, The Heritage Foundation – January 24, 2008

· House Committee on Ways and Means - Hearing on the President’s Fiscal Year 2009 Budget for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Longworth 1100 - 02/13/08 2:00 PM EST

· Francois de Brantes & Edison Machado, Bridges to Excellence – Tue Feb 12th: 10-11am EST – Conf. Call: 641.715.3200, 421814# - for those who could not join on us for the call on Tuesday, please find the presentation materials on BE’s evaluation and reimbursement models

· Len Nichols, New America Foundation – 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC – 202.986.2700 - 02/13/08, 11 AM EST

· Myra Alvarez, Office of Senator Durbin – Hart Senate Office Building room 309 – 202.224.2152 – 02/25/08 3 PM EST

· Jim Anderson, The National Association of Whole-Sale Distributors - 02/27/08

Upcoming

· Britt Weinstock, Congressional Black Caucus - 1510 Longworth House Office Building - 03/06/08 12PM EST

· Pat Ford-Roegner, CEO - The American Academy of Nursing - 888 17th Sr. NW, STE 800 - 03/10/08 2PM EST

· Mark McClellan, The Brookings Institution – 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC. – 202.741.6567 – 03/12/08 11 AM EST

To Be Arranged / Follow Up

o American Board of Internal Medicine
o Mayo Clinic – entering the retail clinic business
o Dan Leonard concerning AHIP’s restructuring of the Plans
o Allied Health Groups, i.e. Physician Assistants, the Pharmacists, Mental Health Ophthalmologists, etc
o Sylvia Johnson, Legislative Representative – UAW
o Council of State Governments
o National Conference of State Legislators
o Mario Lopez, Congressional Hispanic Conference
o Jon Sheiner, Representative Rangel’s Office
o Michael Graham, American Dental Association
o Newt Gingrich, The Center for Healthcare
o Andrew Crowshaw, HHS, integrating Secretary Leavitt’s Value Driven Health Care Program
o CMS to discuss securing further funding for the Medicare Medical Home Demonstrations
o US Chamber of Commerce – Small Business (Health Reform)
o NFIB and other small business organizations
o AQA - Carolyn Clancy’s Task Force
o Association of State and Territorial Health Organizations
o National Association of County & City Health Officials
o Massachusetts Cost and Quality Council (Health Reform)
o Medical Network One, BCBS Michigan
o American Medical Group Association
o NBGA – Bill Jessie, Small Practices
o Hill Meetings to increase funding for CMS Medicare Demonstration Pilots
o Revolution Health (Rosi to help)
o National Rural Association
o American Board of Family Medicine
o American Board of Pediatrics

PCPCC Restructuring

We continue to refine the structure of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative. Working with Health2 Resources we have begun the process of transitioning the various subcommittees of the Collaborative into full fledged Centers of expertise. Please find the names of these Centers, as well as a short description of their function listed below.

Center for Multi-Stakeholder Demonstration: Identify community-based pilot sites in order to test and evaluate concept; offer hands-on technical assistance, share best practices, identify funding sources to advance adoption.

Center to Promote Public Payer Implementation: Assist state Medicaid programs as they implement and refine programs to embed the Patient Centered Medical Home model by offering technical assistance; sharing best practices and advice and guidance on development of successful funding models.

Center for Health Benefit Redesign and Implementation: Create standards and buying criteria to serve as a guide and tool for large and small employers/purchasers in order to build the market demand for adoption of the Medical Home model.

Center for eHealth Information Adoption and Exchange: Evaluate use and application of information technology to support and enable the development and broad adoption of information technology in private practice and among community practitioners. IBM has afford to support this center with key staff assistance from Chris Norden and Barry Mason.

General PCPCC Call Schedule

To organize and operate the numerous Collaborative projects we have setup additional conference calls for all interested participants. However, with the growing number of calls taking place every week we wanted to avoid too much confusion and post the call schedule here on the main PCPCC weekly agenda until every one became more familiar with the new schedule.

The PCPCC Call, Multi-Player Demonstration Task Force, State Medicaid Working Group, and Legislative Committee are all held on the same conference call line. To participate in any of these four calls please use the following dial in information:

Call in number: 641.715.3200
Passcode: 421814#

* PCPCC Call – Thursday, 11 AM EST - This call will continue to serve as the general Collaborative update. We will continue to use this call to provide PCPCC members with information drawn from all Collaborative efforts, and the efforts of our members. We will also be providing information on all upcoming PCPCC events on this call.
o Weekly – Thursday, 11 AM EST - 01/10, 01/17, 01/24, 01/31, 02/07, 02/14, 02/21, 02/28, 03/06, 03/13, 03/20, 03/27, 04/03, 04/10, 04/17, 04/24, 05/01, 05/08, 05/15, 05/22, 05/29, 06/05, 06/12, 06/19, 06/26, 07/03, 07/10, 07/17, 07/24, 07/31, 09/04, 09/11, 09/18, 09/25, 10/02, 10/09, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30, 11/06, 11/13, 11/20, 11/27, 12/04, 12/11, 12/18

* Center for Multi-Stakeholder Demonstration – This group is focused on establishing, or supporting existing, multi-payer multi-player demonstrations across the nation.

o Bi-weekly – Tuesday, 2 PM EST - 01/15, 01/29, 02/12, 02/26, 03/11, 03/25, 04/08, 04/22, 05/06, 05/20, 06/03, 06/17, 07/01, 07/15, 07/29, 09/09, 09/23, 10/07, 10/21, 11/04, 11/18, 12/02, 12/16

* Center to Promote Public Payer Implementation – Unlike the Demonstration Task Force, the Medicaid Work Group is specifically aiming at assisting State Medicaid programs that are seeking to implement the Patient Centered Medical Home.

o Bi-weekly – Tuesday, 3 PM EST - 01/22, 02/05, 02/19, 03/04 03/18, 04/01, 04/15, 04/29, 05/13, 05/27, 06/10, 06/24, 07/08, 07/22, 09/02, 09/16, 09/30, 10/14, 10/28, 11/11, 11/25, 12/09

* Legislative Committee – This group monitors and updates the PCPCC on the current legislative environment on Capitol Hill and in the Washington beltway. Also, it serves as the forum where our members report on their various advocacy efforts on behalf of the PCPCC.

o As needed - Thursday, 3pm EST – There will be a Legislative Committee call today.

* Executive Committee Call – This call is hosted on a separate phone number to be provided to Executive Committee members.

o Monthly – 4pm EST - 01/29, 02/26, 03/18, 04/29, 05/20, 06/20, 07/29, 09/30, 10/28

Executive Committee

There are 24 members of the Executive Committee: Aetna, AAFP, AAP, ACP, AOA, BlueCross BlueShield, CIGNA, CVS Caremark, the Dow Chemical Company, ERIC, GlaxoSmithKline, Health Care Services Corporation, Humana, Inc., IBM, McKesson Corporation, Medco, Merck, Microsoft, Novartis, Pfizer, UnitedHealthcare, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Wellpoint.

Officers

* Chair – Paul Grundy, IBM
* Vice Chair – To be rotated by the Primary Care Physician organizations that signed the Joint Principles
* Chair, Demonstration Taskforce – Carole Flamm, BCBSA – To be rotated by the Health Benefit Company executive committee members
* Chair, Medicaid Working Group – Terry McInnis, GlaxoSmithKline – Still seeking a State Co-Chair
* Chair, Large Employer Benefit Design, Cecily Hall, Microsoft
* Chair, Infrastructure & Technology – John.Agwunobi, Wal-Mart
* Executive Director – Edwina Rogers, ERIC , erogers@eric.org, 202.789.1400

Advisory Board

There are 9 members on the advisory board and they are: National Committee for Quality Assurance, The Commonwealth Fund, National Business Group on Health, National Business Coalition on Health, AARP, Bridges to Excellence, The Center for Excellence In Primary Care, the National Academy for State Health Policy, and the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium. We are considering additional advisory board representatives from state based groups and labor organizations.

Center for Multi-Stakeholder Demonstration

So far on these calls we have received update information from medical home projects in various stages of development across the country. Some groups have been working on practice transformation, and assisting physicians to provide services called for in the joint principles. Others have involved payers, and are working to develop a system of reimbursement that uses quality measurement tools to combine a p4p component to physician reimbursement.

In the coming weeks we will endeavor to integrate these two sets of efforts to apply a blended physician reimbursement model to a comprehensive medical home that meets the standards outlined in the new NCQA utilization tool.

This Task Force is begun to focus strongly on the following states: Maine, Washington state, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Utah, Colorado, and Vermont.

For more information please contact Rohan Beesla at rbeesla@eric.org or call at 202.789.1400.

Center to Promote Public Payer Implementation

Through these initial conversations the members have decided that the role of the Working Group should as follows:

* To maintain a “general construct” of the Medical Home with particular regards to how it integrates into state public health programs such as Medicaid
* To track current and future state based efforts to implement the Medical Home model
* Track and outline the challenges that are identified as various states contemplate and launce Medicaid demonstration projects – and the solutions they come with. These include such issues as:
o How would states address the need for 24/7 access for patients implicit in the Medical Home model? What would solutions exist to support provider groups and patients?
o How does the Medical Home specifically work within at-risk HMO populations?
o How does continuity of care continue for various Medicaid populations as members move in and out of the program (to and from other insured population groups)?
* To provide outreach to state leaders and Medicaid officials in order to determine what their specific needs and requests concerning the Medical Home model
* Make experts and outside resources available to state and Medicaid program employees as they work to implement the PCMH

This Working Group will be releasing a short list of “hot” states in the very near future. These will be states we have been working closely with to craft state legislation or state Medicaid demonstrations.

For more information please contact Joe Yoon Grundy at jgrundy@eric.org or call at 202.789.1400.

Center for Health Benefit Redesign and Implementation

We have received a proposal from the National Business Coalition on Health to begin the process of drafting the Employer White Paper. We will be reporting on this effort as soon as we finalize our conversations with the NBCH.

Commonwealth Funded NASHP-ERIC Medicaid Project

The contract between the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, and the National Academy for State Health Policy has been finalized.

Additionally the NASHP led efforts will eventually produce a series of 4 webcasts, ranging in topics from general information on the PCMH to structural implementation at the state level, technical reports and papers to assists state Medicaid programs, and a one and a half day Summit here in Washington, DC which will take place on July 29th and 30th.

NASHP has already begun reaching out to the states with an informal survey tracking how Medicaid officials view the Medical Home concept in their states, as well as, attempting to gauge the various underlying difficulties that states will have to overcome during the implementation phase. The first call with the Advisory Taskforce took place on Friday, February 1st.

Website

As we have stated on the past few weeks, there has been a significant amount of work to update www.pcpcc.net. However, there a number of things that we still need to take care of. The first priority is establishing a clear and easy way for interested organizations to join the Collaborative. Also, we are attempting to updated the long outdated content on the site, however, to date it has been a struggle to find the time to do so.

To rectify this situation we have hired the webdesigner to also act as a webmaster. Loren Vandegrift will be participating on all PCPCC calls and will be posting all new materials and event updates on the website stemming from our conversations. For those interested in contacting Loren with concerns or recommendations please contact at his email lorenvandegrift@gmail.com.

Finally, I am sure that you have noticed that we have had some issues with our outgoing listservs. To rectify this issue we have moved entirely to listservs hosted on www.pcpcc.net. As always, Collaborative staff will be updating the listservs on a daily basis.

Legislative Update

This past week we had a very successful meeting with Myra Alvarez of Senator Durbin's staff. She provided an update on the state of play of the Medical Home Act of 2007, and a general update on the Medical Home concept here on Capitol Hill. While there has been a growing excitement for Primary Care driven health reform efforts, particularly growing out of efforts of state Medicaid programs, there is still a lack of understanding about the PCMH itself.

We intend to begin a general educational effort to help bring the specific message of the Patient Centered Medical Home to Congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle.

Legal

The Collaborative has retained Robin Johnson, of Balch & Bingham LLP (rjohnson@balch.com), as legal counsel. We are in the process of establishing a nonprofit business association 501(c)(6) called the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative and a nonprofit foundation 501(c)(3) Patient Centered Primary Care Foundation Both entities have been the appropriate papers filed in DC for incorporation, IRS employer identification numbers received and bank accounts opened at Eagle Bank on K Street. The IRS nonprofit requests will be filed shortly In addition, our lawyer will assist with drafting documents for the Center for Multi-Stakeholder Demonstration (i.e., confidentiality agreements, gain sharing guidelines, antitrust guidelines, etc) .

Collaborative Brochure and Public Relations

The Collaborative has hired Katie Kapps and her firm Health2Resources to assist us with our public relations works in procuring press publications and our major national conferences. Katie and her firm have been working diligently to design us the perfect Collaborative brochure.

Hill Briefings

Completed

June 28th – House briefing with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Rep. Timothy Murphy (R-Pa) speaking in support of the Medical Home mode

July 18th - House briefing with Dr. Allen Dobson, Director of the North Carolina Medicaid program, presenting on the NC Access program

July 18th - Senate briefing with Dr. Allen Dobson, Director of the North Carolina Medicaid program, presenting on the NC Access program

September 13th - Senate briefing co-sponsored by Senator Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Burr (R-NC) to educate Senate staffers on the concept of the Patient Centered Medical Home

Hearings:

On May 10th, 2007 the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Health held a hearing on Options to Improve Quality and Efficiency Among Medicare Physicians. This was in large part the introduction for many Congressional members to the concept of the Medical Home. For full testimonies from the witnesses and Chairman Stark's announcement check the following link.
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=detail&hearing=558

On February 12, 2008 the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing on Addressing Healthcare Workforce Issues for the Future. Included in this hearing was a witness testimony from Kevin Grumbach, M.D., Director, UCSF Center for California Health Workforce Studies Professor and Chair, UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine, San Francisco, CA, which we strongly recommend that all PCPCC members take the time to read through.

http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2008_02_12/2008_02_12.html

Grant Funding

The PCPCC looks forward to working with interested parties in constructing proposals to secure additional grant funding from institutions looking to support both public and private sector Medical Home research and demonstrations.

We are developing a target list of organizations such as the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and numerous employer foundations for future collaboration on projects surrounding the Medical Home concept.

We are currently looking to hire a professional grant writer to work with the PCPCC on these efforts.

Upcoming Conferences and Events

February 22, 2008 – Paul Grundy has been invited to speak at the conference being held by the Surgical Quality Alliance here in Washington, DC.

March 9-11, 2008 - We have an attendee spot at the Mayo Clinic's National Symposium on Healthcare Reform in Leesburgh, Virginia.

March 10-13, 2008 – World Health Congress is holding a Leadership Summit on Public Reporting and Disclosure of Healthcare Cost and Quality will convene opinion leaders who will debate and define innovative strategies for the collection and communication of healthcare quality and cost.

March 24, 2008 - The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and the Delmarva Foundation have provided a speaking opportunity to the Collaborative at the Department’s Fourth Annual Quality Improvement conference scheduled for March 24, 2008 in Sacramento, CA. We will continue to release further details on the agenda and the program as we receive them.

March 27-29th, 2008 - The Nebraska chapter of the AAFP will be hosting their 60th Annual Meeting and Scientific Assembly. They extended an invitation for the Collaborative to participate.

April 10th, 2008 – The Thomas Jefferson University will be hosting the 9th Annual Paul C. Brucker Lecture. Members of the Collaborative have been invited to attend this meeting.

April 12th, 2008 - The Collaborative has been asked to provide a speaker for the 2nd Annual Health Disparities Conference for Xavier University of Louisiana College of Pharmacy.

April 15th, 2008 - The New York Business Group on Health will be holding a conference and have invited Dr. Grundy to participate. We will be releasing more details as we receive them.

August 4-5, 2008 - The PCPCC has been invited to speak at the 6th Annual Leadership Summit on Healthcare Quality, taking place in Boston. We will be providing additional details on who we will have speaking on behalf of the Collaborative and more precise details on the event in the near future.