BOSTON, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The Picker Institute, Inc., a recognized world leader in the area of scientific measurement and improvement of the patient’s experience and the promotion of patient-centered care, announced the winners of the Picker Institute Annual Awards for Advancement of Patient Centered Care during its awards ceremony on October 26.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051026/NEW019LOGO ) The 2005 award recipients are: * Albert G. Mulley Jr., M.D. and John E. Wennberg, M.D., M.P.H. * The Integrated Healthcare Association * Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr Region Initiative) and The Boston Consulting Group
The awards are made annually to recognize outstanding contributions to improving the lives of patients by making interaction with the healthcare system less stressful and more comfortable. In addition to the recognition, each winner receives a $10,000 cash prize.
“The Picker Institute’s mission is to improve the healthcare provider’s understanding of each patient’s values, preferences, and expressed needs,” said Harvey Picker, Founder of the Picker Institute. “One of the ways we seek to advance this cause is by recognizing, and calling to the attention of those in healthcare, their colleagues in this endeavor whose work has provided outstanding advances toward our common mission.”
The awards come at a time when many Americans are dissatisfied with the care they receive. According to the NRC + Picker’s 2004-2005 survey of about a million patients in the United States:
* 34 percent of surgical patients and 35 percent of medical patients reported that hospital staff failed to tell them what danger signals to look for when they were sent home from the hospital. * More than one-third of all patients said that their doctors and nurses did not answer their questions in a way they could understand. * 40 percent of patients responded that, if they had any anxieties or fears about their condition or treatment, a doctor failed to discuss them with the patient, while 52 percent of patients said the same for a nurse.
“During the past two decades, the Picker Institute has contributed significantly to the advancement of patient-centered healthcare in both the United States and internationally,” said Dr. Picker. “However, statistics such as these highlight not only the importance of the work of this year’s award winners, but also the need for much more work to be done to improve patients’ experiences.”
2005 Award Recipient Bios
Colleagues Dr. Albert G. Mulley and Dr. John E. Wennberg won the award for lifetime achievements in the advancement of patient-centered care, including their work at the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, which they co-founded in 1989. Originally housed at the Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H., the Foundation moved to Boston in 2002 due to the expanding scope of its work. The Foundation is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to strengthen the role patients play in selecting treatments for their medical condition, in order to increase their confidence in their choices and to increase the chances that they will follow through with their part of the treatment paths they choose. Research has also shown that the introduction of informed patient preference tends to lead to a decline in demand for higher- cost, more-invasive treatment options such as discretionary surgery.
Dr. Mulley is Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as an Overseer of Dartmouth Medical School and a Director of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical School. Dr. Wennberg is the Director of the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at the Dartmouth Medical School. He has been a Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine since 1980 and in the Department of Medicine since 1989.
The Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), composed of top decision- makers from major healthcare stakeholder groups in California, won the Picker Award for its innovative pay-for-performance (P4P) program. The program measures and rewards quality of care (including patient experience) at 225 physician organizations, representing 35,000 physicians and 6.2 million patients in California.
IHA’s P4P program launched in 2002 at a time when health plans in California had varied approaches to performance measurement, and only a few plans provided financial reward for performance. IHA was able to convene a group of competing health plans providing commercial insurance coverage in California, such as Aetna, Blue Cross, and Blue Shield, and get them to agree to a common set of measures on which they would base the program. In 2004, quality-related performance payouts (based on IHA measures) by health plans to physician organizations totaled over $37 million.
The patient-experience performance measures include communication with the physician, overall rating of the physician, overall rating of healthcare, problems seeing a specialist, and timely care and service. IHA’s P4P program is the largest such program in the country. Because it involves multiple, competing commercial health plans in a large statewide initiative, it is an important model for other states.
The Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr Region Initiative), an organization of 58 major companies from the Rhine and Ruhr Regions of Germany that aims to promote business development, and The Boston Consulting Group, a worldwide management and strategy consulting firm based in Boston, won the award for their work in creating the first Hospital Guide in Germany. The 220-page Guide, published in 2004, provides patients with an analysis of 39 hospitals and 54 specialist departments in the Rhine-Ruhr region in order to help patients find the medical facilities best suited to handle their individual situation. Comparisons were based on both patient and practitioner surveys. Such transparency allows patients to take a more active role in their own treatment, and also encourages healthcare facilities to improve patient treatment and care. Expectations are high for other parts of Germany to start similar projects.
Public interest in the first guide in 2004 was overwhelming. Meanwhile, an expanded and enhanced second edition was published in October and has already become a bestseller: 20,000 of the 25,000 copies printed had already sold after only one week.
About the Picker Institute
The Picker Institute, based in Boston with offices throughout Europe, is an independent nonprofit organization that promotes the advancement of patient-centered care, and the improvement of patients’ experiences and interactions with their healthcare providers.
Established in Boston in 1994, the Picker Institute was the first to create scientifically valid nationwide surveys and databanks on patient- centered care, educating doctors and hospital staff on how they could improve service for their patients. The patient’s perspective is now one of the most standard metrics of performance routinely measured by most healthcare organizations.
The Picker Institute has offices in Boston, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, and a sister organization, Picker Institute Europe, in the United Kingdom. Together they advance patient-centered care through: education programs, research grants, annual best practice recognition awards, publications on patient-centered care topics, scientifically valid survey instruments, research databanks, and an annual international symposium.
The Picker Institute outlines the dimensions of patient-centered care, or what patients should expect from their healthcare, as the following: access to care; respect for patient values, preferences, and expressed needs; coordination of care; physical comfort; emotional support; involvement of family and friends; information, communication, and education; transition and continuity.
These dimensions are explored in the Institute’s classic text, “Through the Patient’s Eyes.” To learn more about the Picker Institute, please go to http://www.pickerinstitute.org.
Contact: Sara Steindorf
617/520-7259 ssteindorf@webershandwick.com
Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051026/NEW019LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.orgPRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.comPicker Institute, Inc.
CONTACT: Sara Steindorf for the Picker Institute, +1-617-520-7259,ssteindorf@webershandwick.com
Web site: http://www.pickerinstitute.org//
