Hearst Health, a division of Hearst, and the Jefferson College of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University, have chosen the three finalists for the 2017 Hearst Health Prize, an annual $100,000 award that recognizes an organization’s or an individual’s achievement in managing or improving health in the United States.
Gregory Dorn, MD, president of Hearst Health, and David B. Nash, MD, dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health, who is one of the judges, announced the front-runners on January 26.
“One of our primary goals for the Hearst Health Prize is to generate widespread awareness for extraordinary accomplishments in the field of population health and advance the peer-reviewed body of work,” Dorn said in a statement. “All three finalists’ programs are making significant progress against enormous healthcare challenges.”
The contest drew submissions from hospitals and health systems, academic medical centers, community organizations, nonprofits, healthcare technology companies and health departments across the across the country.
The finalists are presented here in alphabetical order.
American Heart Association/American Stroke Association: “Target: Stroke” is a national initiative aimed at increasing the number of eligible stroke patients receiving tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) within the specified time frame in order to protect the brain from disability. The initiative enrolled more than 1,200 U.S. hospitals. Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. and the number one cause of preventable disability. Every year 795,000 Americans have a stroke. What matters most in the protection of the brain from disability is time.
Impact of program:
• Patients treated within 60 minutes experienced improved outcomes including lower in-hospital mortality and reduced long-term disability
• Participating hospitals dropped average door-to-needle times from 74 minutes to 59 minutes
• Today, 75 percent of patients are treated within the 60-minute door-to-needle time (from 2010 to 2016, the growth in the number of hospitals receiving recognition for treatment goals via “Target: Stroke” grew from 8.9 percent to 46.2 percent)
California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative based at Stanford University: CMQCC’s mission is to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, and reduce racial-ethnic disparities in birth outcomes. Through a series of data-driven quality improvement projects, CMQCC’s work contributed to a significant decline in maternal mortality in California at a time when U.S. rates doubled.
Impact of program:
• CMQCC partnered with many organizations within the state to lead a series of coordinated targeted quality improvement initiatives that drove a decline in California’s maternal mortality rate of more than 55 percent from 2006 to 2013 (from 16.9 to 7.3 deaths per 100,000 live births)
• Severe maternal morbidity was reduced by 20.8 percent from 2014 to 2016 among 126 hospitals (288,210 births) participating in the California Partnership for Maternal Safety Collaborative, an initiative of CMQCC along with other stakeholders; As a point of comparison, a 48-hospital sample (83,632 births) not participating in the initiative had a 1.2 percent reduction in maternal morbidity
Intermountain Healthcare: Approximately 43 million American adults (18 percent of the total adult population in the U.S.) have a mental illness. In 2000, Intermountain Healthcare created a Mental Health Integration program for patients that embeds mental health screening and treatment within primary care and select specialty practices, utilizing a team-based approach to help patients and their families manage the complexity of both mental and physical health.
Impact of program, based on a retrospective longitudinal cohort study between 2003 and 2013 (data of 113,453 unique patients) comparing Team-Based Care to Traditional Practice Medicine:
• The Team-Based Care model had higher rates of active depression screening (46 vs. 24.1 percent); adherence to diabetes care bundle (24.6 vs. 19.5 percent); and documentation of self-care plans (48.4 vs. 8.7 percent)
• Rates of healthcare utilization were lower for Team-Based Care patients (18.1 vs. 23.5 visits per 100 person-years)
• Significant reductions in payments to the delivery system were associated with Team-Based Care group vs. the Traditional Practice Medicine ($3,400.62 vs. $3,515.71) and were lower than the investments in the Team-Based Care program.
The finalists will present at the 17th annual Population Health Colloquium in Philadelphia on March 27, 2017. One winner of the Hearst Health Prize will be announced at the Colloquium the next morning, March 28.
The following organizations received Honorable Mention for their programs:
• Baylor College of Medicine
• Children’s Health System of Texas
• Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH)
• Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University
• Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force
• New York-Presbyterian Hospital
• Rush University Medical Center
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
