Health

Data propels better experiences in Mass. primary care \\ By Livia Gershon H ow should a primary care office measure its success in treating patients? Increasingly, providers are going right to the source and asking patients, and it's starting to pay off. "Over time, the bar has continued to be raised," said Barbra Rabson, president and CEO of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), an organi- zation that collects and shares information about health care quality. "There's an expectation and an awareness that patients are the best reporters." THE POWER OF PATIENT REPORTING 20 HEALTH • Fall 2017 MHQP has been collecting data on patients' experience since 2005. Its most recent report, released in January, shows that both adult and pediatric primary care offices have improved substantially over the years. Quality breeds quality Rabson said that the increasing focus on quality measurements in general, and patient experience data in particular, have helped drive improve- ments. Part of that is thanks to insur- ers' reimbursement plans that increas- ingly base some payments on quality measures. But much of it is simply about the availability of data to the public and to providers themselves. "When they get feedback that shows that this are not going as well as they antici- pated, they want to fix it," Rabson said. Dr. Thomas Scornavacca, senior medical director at UMass Memorial Health Care's Office of Clinical Integration and Population Health, said data-driven changes are a top priority for the UMass system's primary care offices. "Population health, or value-based care, or the transition from volume to value—however you phrase it—is kind of where we've been living over the past six years or so," he said. Scornavacca, who also serves on MHQP's Board of Trustees, said it can be tricky to make data-based changes at physician practices, given how many factors contribute to individuals' health and their experiences with the medical system. Payment systems influence how much time a doctor can spend with each patient, while issues like parking affect patients' experiences going to an appointment. More broadly, things like poverty, hunger, and inadequate social services for people with disabilities or chronic conditions have a huge influence on health. "The complexity of the system is where patients and the community strug- gle, and providers struggle as well," Scornavacca said. "As a provider, you're trying to give your best effort one- on-one with a patient." To begin addressing some of the broader issues, he said, UMass Memorial has been working with groups like the YMCA, food banks, and elder service providers. Meanwhile, on the individual prac- tice level, Scornavacca and his col- leagues try to provide data that is meaningful to doctors and other prac- tice staff. Specialists take the informa- tion and use it to build "action plans" to improve patients' experiences in specific offices. One thing they've found particularly helpful is present- ing representative comments from patients along with the numbers. "We have found that simply sharing the comments that come in in these surveys carry exponentially more weight to providers and staff mem- Dr. Thomas Scornavacca, UMass Memorial Health Care Inc. Dr. Ana Sujata Madariya, of Worcester-based Reliant Medical Group, discusses patient care. P H O T O / C O U R T E S Y

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