DETROIT, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiac Consortium, which has reduced complications and saved the lives of angioplasty patients as well as more than $8 million in unplanned medical care costs, will be honored with a Health Care Heroes award from Crain's Detroit Business at a Sept. 23 luncheon at the Detroit Athletic Club. The Michigan Blues' generic drug campaign received the award last year. Both awards were in the Advancements in Health Care - Corporate category.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiac Consortium has successfully brought together researchers, practicing physicians and hospitals with the Michigan Blues to work together to improve outcomes for patients undergoing angioplasty. The consortium is anticipating using its work as a model for other treatment areas to improve health care for even more patients.
"Expanding this approach will affect the quality of care for thousands of patients. We estimate that more than 20,000 patients have already enjoyed the benefits of the angioplasty quality improvement program annually," says David Share, M.D., clinical director of the Center for Health Care Quality and Evaluative Studies at the Blues, and a co-investigator in the consortium. "It also will potentially save patients and hospitals even more in costs associated with prevented complications," he adds.
Share worked with Mauro Moscucci, M.D., University of Michigan Health System cardiologist, who directed the initial research on angioplasty quality improvement and is the principal investigator and director of the consortium's angioplasty project. The project involved a five-year study to determine the best ways to improve delivery of care and medications to reduce angioplasty complications, including unplanned bypass surgery, heart attack, kidney failure and in-hospital death.
The Blues also provide funding for data collection from 18 participating Michigan hospitals, creating the framework for quality improvement research.
Using information collected by the 18 participating hospitals, doctors developed an accurate picture of which practices produced the best outcomes for angioplasty and how to more effectively judge each patient's risk for complications.
"Our results show just what can be achieved when hospitals cooperate, rather than compete, in a joint effort aimed at improving care," says Moscucci, who directs interventional cardiology and the cardiac catheterization lab at the U-M Cardiovascular Center. "It enables us to collect data on angioplasty and other percutaneous interventions, look for variations in care and deviations from guidelines, determine the risk factors for adverse outcomes, identify opportunities for improvement, and measure the impact of our efforts on patient outcomes."
Research showed that in 25,245 artery-clearing angioplasties performed between July 1997 and September 2002 at five of the hospitals, practice improvements resulted in a significant reduction in complications: kidney failure requiring dialysis plummeted 57 percent, heart attack incidence fell 19 percent, unplanned coronary artery bypass surgery dropped 22 percent, and in-hospital deaths following angioplasty dropped 27 percent.
The improvements were calculated to have resulted in about $8 million in annual savings in unplanned medical costs.
The project's success persuaded the Michigan Blues to require that hospitals participate in the consortium's quality assessment and improvement efforts for them to receive recognition in the Blues' Cardiac Centers of Excellence Program.
The outcome from the consortium, Share says, was a win-win for all involved: for the patient, improved medical care based on scientific evidence; for the physician, learning what practices yield the best results; and for the health plan, helping to hold down costs for all.
The consortium's work also was recently recognized by the Harvard School of Medicine, which reviewed programs from Blue Cross Blue Shield plans across the country, for its innovative approach to improving the nation's health care system.
Hospitals participating in the research:
Borgess Medical Center, Kalamazoo; Genesys Regional Medical Center, Grand Blanc; Harper Hospital, Detroit; Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit; Ingham Regional Medical Center, Lansing; McLaren Regional Medical Center, Flint; Marquette General Hospital, Marquette; Northern Michigan Hospital, Petoskey; Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center, Dearborn.
Others are: Providence Hospital and Medical Centers, Southfield; St. John Hospital and Medical Center, Detroit; St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor; St. Joseph Mercy Oakland, Pontiac; St. Mary's Medical Center of Saginaw; Edward W. Sparrow Hospital, Lansing; Spectrum Health - Blodgett Campus, Grand Rapids; Spectrum Health - Butterworth Campus, Grand Rapids; University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a nonprofit corporation, provides health care benefits to just under 4.8 million members through a variety of plans: Traditional, Blue Preferred and Community Blue PPOs, Blue Choice Point of Service, and the Blue Care Network HMO. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are nonprofit corporations and independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more information, visit http://www.bcbsm.com/ .
Blue Cross Blue Shield of MichiganCONTACT: Helen Stojic, +1-313-225-8113, or Bill Semion, +1-313-225-7975,both of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
Web site: http://www.bcbsm.com/
