Recognition April 2015

NCQA selects Dr. Grossman to help guide performance measurement nationwide

Group Health Medical Director for Population and Purchaser Strategy and GHRI Senior Investigator David Grossman, MD, MPH, recently began a two-year term on the committee that develops and refines HEDIS®—the performance measures used by 90 percent of the nation’s health plans. Appointed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to its Committee on Performance Measures, Dr. Grossman will work with employers, consumers, and other health plan representatives to decide on additions and revisions to HEDIS content. Because HEDIS measures are so widely used and specifically defined, they allow an “apples-to-apples” comparison of health plan performance.

Dr. Reid shares medical home insights at international conference

On March 25, Group Health Medical Director for Research Translation Robert Reid, MD, PhD, was in Edinburgh, Scotland, for the 15^th International Conference for Integrated Care. Dr. Reid, who is also a senior investigator at GHRI, was invited to speak about Group Health’s experience with the patient-centered medical home during the opening plenary session: Engagement and Co-production with Individuals and Communities. The annual conference brings together several hundred integrated care professionals from around the world—including policymakers, clinicians, researchers, administrators, commercial partners. The theme of this year’s event was "Complex needs, integrated solutions: Engaging, empowering, and enabling people for active and healthy living."

Kudos to Dr. Penfold for ‘top-five’ paper in Academic Pediatrics

A paper by GHRI Associate Investigator Robert Penfold, PhD, and a colleague from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute was among Academic Pediatrics’ top-five most-downloaded articles in 2014: Use of Interrupted Time Series Analysis in Evaluating Health Care Quality Improvements. Published in the journal’s special Quality Improvement in Pediatric Health Care issue in late 2013, their paper describes how interrupted time series analysis is a useful tool for quality improvement, especially when a randomized trial is not feasible. The method allows scientists to analyze changes in population-level health outcomes in the time periods before and after a new policy or program is implemented.  

IOM taps Dr. Larson’s expertise on healthy aging for annual meeting

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently asked GHRI Executive Director Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH, to serve on the Expert Program Planning Committee for its 2015 annual meeting, to be held in October. The meeting’s scientific agenda will focus on aging and the implications of an aging society. Nationally recognized for his research on healthy aging, Dr. Larson also serves as Group Health’s vice president for research and is a member of the IOM. As part of the planning committee, he will help determine the meeting’s structure, session topics, and speakers.