Posted by Peter Margolis on September 09, 2013
The day to day work of changing care delivery systems - to make them more reliable and effective - is important but it's nice to learn from time to time that there's an impact at multiple levels of the health care system.
One of the major federal sponsors of health services research is the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Rick Kronick, PhD was recently appointed the agency's new director. Dr. Kronick has experience as a researcher, as a leader in Massachusetts and in Washington, DC. His first day on the job was two weeks ago and he mentioned ImproveCareNow in his opening remarks to the agency.
A program officer at AHRQ emailed me to share this news. Dr. Kronick's theme was achieving an impact through health services research. She paraphrased Dr. Kronick as saying that all research is viewed with a skeptical eye in tight economic times so it is important to be able to show measurable progress towards the goal of an impact on outcomes. Dr. Kronick cited ImproveCareNow as a leading of example of the kind of research that AHRQ should be sponsoring because of the very significant impact that we have had (in part through the support of the Enhanced Registries project).
By continuing to stay focused on improving outcomes, ImproveCareNow is demonstrating that when we work together the health care system can change. Achieving an impact at a larger level isn't the reason why we're doing this. At the same time, it's important for policy makers and others to know that there's hope for accelerating improvement and to know about models like ours that work. Hopefully, this will make those who support our work, more inclined to continue to do so.