New Assessment to Benchmark Health Management Workforce  Performance

Population health management is one of the fastest growing fields in health care. It is also key to many new service and reimbursement provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2009 (health care reform). In the new health care environment, direct care and health management programs will increasingly be evaluated and reimbursed based on their ability to deliver measurable value. While advancements in medicine, innovations in care delivery and new technologies will improve outcomes, it may be the quality of the professional-patient relationship that matters most. Organizations that can routinely apply evidence-based interventions to improve engagement, adherence, self-care and lifestyle management will thrive. While there are excellent guidelines for health management program outcome measurement, e.g., DMAA: The Care Continuum’s Alliance’s Outcomes Guidelines Report, Volume 4, less attention has been given to benchmarking proficiency and managing the performance of the clinicians who actually deliver health coaching, disease management or care management services.

To close this gap, HealthSciences has engaged an expert work group in health management, motivational interviewing (MI), human resources and performance improvement, to create and validate a standardized benchmarking protocol and tool. According to Dr. Blake Andersen, HealthSciences Institute CEO, “There is no shortage of evidence demonstrating that some approaches like MI work better than others, yet we see wide variance between and within organizations in the application of these approaches on-the-job. It also important to note that MI research studies also show that clinician self-ratings of MI proficiency bear little relationship to actual MI proficiency. We all agree that formal, evidence-based health management services should be the standard of practice in the field. Yet, we have no validated and practical tools for measuring workforce performance or competency gaps. And despite significant investments in MI training, organizations typically have few options for evaluating return-on-investment.” See HealthSciences Institute InFocus: Evidence-Based Health Coaching for more on the imperatives and foundations for this effort: http://www.healthsciences.org/Infocus/index.html.

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