Two of my favorite organizations, Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) and Consumer Reports, have teamed up for an innovative new project to help consumers find physicians who best fit their own preferences.  Based on a new MHQP survey of over 60,000 adults and parents, and nearly 500 practices, Consumer Reports today is releasing its first ever Patient Experience Ratings of primary care physician groups in Massachusetts.

The good news: according to the report, every Bay State resident lives close to a high-scoring practice, with no region scoring higher than any other.

"The flip side: there are probably some low scoring practices near you, too."

And "nearly every practice has room for improvement." 

And while Massachusetts health reform increased the demand for doctors, people who already had providers found no issue getting the needed care.

So what? So Massachusetts residents have a new resource to help choose the best primary care practices. It's a milestone in providing consumers with valid, reliable, and useful health information. Let's hope consumers take advantage of it.

For nearly 20 years, MHQP has been doing meticulous work to make medical care in Massachusetts more transparent in order to improve quality. Teaming up with Consumer Reports, the world's largest product-testing organization, takes their abilities to a new level. Consumer Reports is also producing a special version of the magazine for distribution to its subscribers and newsstands in Massachusetts.

The Physician Ratings Report is now available online at www.mhqp.org.  Check out your own physician practice to see how they rank.

(Research assistant: Gideon Duke-Cohan.)

It's a truism in public health that when their job is done well, no one notices. No one notices water that isn't dirty, air that's clean, poisonings that don't occur, diseases and infections that don't emerge.

Well, not always.

FULL ENTRY

Here's something worthy of notice: 30 Massachusetts business leaders this week urged House and Senate leaders to include in their health care cost control legislation a provision to eliminate the exemption from food taxes for soda and candy. Here are the 30 names and their companies who were organized by the Alliance for Business Leadership.

• Andrew Tarsy, President & Executive Director, The Alliance for Business Leadership
• J.J. Bartlett, President, Fishing Partnership*
• Robert Beal, Partner and President, The Beal Companies
• Josh Boger, Founder & CEO (retired), Vertex Pharmaceuticals
• Nicolas Boillot, CEO, HB Agency
• Howard Brick, CEO & Director, MedPanel, LLC
• Jeff Bussgang, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners
• Geoff Chasin, President, New England Retail Express
• Tom Clay, CEO, Xtalic Corporation
• Bob Crowe, Partner, Nelson Mullins
• Betsey Dalbeck, Owner/President, Fresh Tracks
• Jeff Dorigan, Global Head, Professional Development Program, State Street Corporation
• Phil Edmundson, Chairman & CEO, William Gallagher Associates
• Israel Ganot, President, Co-Founder & CEO, Gazelle
• Norm Gorin, Chairman & President, Instinct Health Sciences, Inc
• Mark Herman, Vice President, Goldman Sachs
• Diane Hessan, President & CEO, Communispace Corporation
• Kip Hollister, Founder & CEO, Hollister Staffing
• Trish Karter, Founder & Chief Deer, Dancing Deer Baking Company
• Ed Krapels, CEO, Anbaric Transmission
• Janet Kraus, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School
• Charles Lord, Senior Project Manager, CQuest Capital LLC
• Jack Manning, President & CEO, Boston Capital
• George Matouk, President & CEO, John Matouk & Co., Inc
• Linda Moulton, CEO , Ceralta Technologies
• Mari Ryan, Founder & CEO, Advancing Wellness
• Tedd Saunders, President, EcoLogical Solutions, Inc
• David Schechter, Managing Partner, Perspective Global Management, LLC
• Ron Shaich, Founder, Chairman & Co- CEO, Panera Bread Company
• Bill Sullivan, CEO, Hub Healthcare Management Services

FULL ENTRY

Catching up on some late reading, and something from the April 21 National Journal jumped out like a rocket and demands attention:

"The Other Jobs Bill: Mitt Romney lionizes entrepreneurship. His health care law -- and possibly the national version based on it -- helped more than he knew."

Margot Sanger-Katz starts her article by describing Laura Fitton who launched a social media marketing company in 2009. Laura didn't have a lot of money to pay employees, though she found herself able to lure out-of-state talent because of ... Massachusetts health reform. "I absolutely was able to get better people," says Fitton.

Here are extended excerpts from the article which deserves a lot more attention and discussion:

FULL ENTRY

We now have initial legislative proposals from both the House of Representatives and the Senate to create new mechanisms to control the rising growth of health care costs. After reading both of them, I agree with MIT economist Jon Gruber who notes that the similarities vastly outweigh the differences. Even though the co-chairs of the Joint Financing Committee, Senator Dick Moore (D-Uxbridge) and Representative Steve Walsh (D-Lynn) were unable to agree on a common proposal in committee, their two versions are mighty close.

And that's not a bad thing at all if you would like to see something happen in the short amount of time that remains between now and the end of the legislative session on July 31st.

FULL ENTRY

Message to the smart people in the Massachusetts House of Representatives who are getting ready to debate legislation to reform the health care financing/payment system: if you want to save real money and add real value to our society, emphasize prevention and public health, and prioritize it.

Here's the latest, just in time for the House debate, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Reduce the rate of growth of obesity by one percent a year over the next two decades, and slice the nation's health care costs by $85 billion.

Keep obesity rates at current rates -- well below the 33 percent projected increase, and save the nation $550 billion during the same period.

FULL ENTRY

I observe a tendency in both human nature and public policy to see progress in a difficult situation and to declare victory prematurely. Often it turns out that the early victory signs were ephemeral and an opportunity to secure more enduring change gets missed.

Two related examples of that are happening right now, both involve national and Massachusetts health policy choices. One involves rising health care costs, and the other the obesity epidemic and sugar sweetened beverages.

Let's first look at costs.

FULL ENTRY

Apropos the previous post on the repeated delays in legislative consideration of Governor Patrick's health care cost control proposals, here is some smart reporting from the State House News Service:

Fourteen months after Gov. Deval Patrick filed a proposal on the issue, Senate President Therese Murray said Wednesday she expects the Senate to take action in mid-May on a bill making major changes to the way health care is delivered and paid for in Massachusetts.

"Probably the week before budget," Murray told the News Service, referencing the fact that the Senate intends to consider its annual budget plan the week before Memorial Day.

The bill, with multi-billion-dollar implications for an industry that also ranks as Massachusetts largest employer, has been sitting idle in the Legislature's Health Care Financing Committee since Patrick filed it in February 2011. On Wednesday, the committee decided to discharge Patrick's bill unchanged and send it to the Senate budget committee, a step that signals the bill is nearing consideration in the full Senate.

Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo have pledged to act on a health care payment reform proposal this spring, but have offered no concrete timetable, even as the Legislature nears its last three months of formal business for the session.

The release of the governor's bill without changes suggests that the House and Senate were unable to forge agreement on a unified, pre-negotiated proposal, one that could help speed consideration and limit disagreement as lawmakers head toward their five-month campaign and holiday season recess. ...

Murray and DeLeo have both signaled they intend to set long-term goals for health care cost increase, with DeLeo saying he believes limiting health care cost growth to the level of "gross state product" is achievable.

In this case, any news is good news.  Still, the fact that the Health Care Financing Committee chose to discharge the legislation to the Senate without making its own report is an indication of significant differences between the House and Senate leadership on the matter.  That could be problematic because of the short amount of time left until formal legislative business ends on July 31st.  Had the Committee been able to settle on a common framework, prospects for passage would be far more favorable. 

Still, any news is good news -- in this case.  The nation is watching -- let's not let them down.

I confess, it feels strange.

And in Massachusetts, it feels doubly strange.

Just a month ago, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA/ObamaCare). Defenders of the law greeted the arguments with confidence, and then left the Chamber despondent that the incompetent representation of our position was an omen for a disastrous decision to be. Could the conservative SCOTUS majority that selected George W. Bush as president and concocted the Citizens United decision be readying a triple-header?

Hate to say it, beats me.

FULL ENTRY

I spent a healthy part of this afternoon at the Canary Square Restaurant in Jamaica Plain at a fundraiser for NAMI Massachusetts, organized by their board member Steve Rosenfeld. NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the largest advocacy group in the nation for adults with mental illness -- perhaps the most important organization in the state or nation to you, if you have or know someone with mental illness.

NAMI's prime mission is addressing the stigma faced by those with mental illness and their families and loved ones. They are an indispensable resource for individuals and families facing mental illness, and provide "free mental health family-based education, family and peer support and grassroots advocacy." Currently, one of their projects is training on mental illness for local police departments across the Commonwealth.

This afternoon's event was intended to raise $20,000, and by the end of the event, more than $40,000 had been collected. The main speakers were Michael and Kitty Dukakis who began grappling with Kitty's depression in the late 1980s. After 17 years, they found relief in electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and Kitty is now an author and speaker on mental illness. They are both passionately open about their experiences in order to help others.

NAMI Massachusetts will host its annual NAMI Walks fundraiser on Saturday, May 12th. Their executive director, Laurie Martinelli, notes that of the 85 NAMI chapters across the nation, the Massachusetts Walk is the most successful. Here's to their continued success!