September 2014 John Weeks Integrator Round-Up: Policy

Is any other organization or group also considering “a big honking lawsuit” on Section 2706?

Query: The Integrator was recently approached by the executive director of a strong, state-level professional organization that is considering taking to the courts to force just administration of Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act, Non Discrimination in Health Care. The leader was querying whether other organizations were exploring legal strategies. At this time in which the US Appropriations Committee is, for the second time, asking US Health and Human Services to abide by the intent of Congress, the timing might be right. If your organization has a non-frivolous interest in this, or you are an individual with, or connected to, the means to support what will certainly be a costly engagement, please contact me: [email protected] and I will connect you to the party that made the inquiry. I previously wrote about this strategy here at the Huffington Post.

by John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports

Is any other organization or group also considering “a big honking lawsuit” on Section 2706?

Query: The Integrator was recently approached by the executive director of a strong, state-level professional organization that is considering taking to the courts to force just administration of Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act, Non Discrimination in Health Care. The leader was querying whether other organizations were exploring legal strategies. At this time in which the US Appropriations Committee is, for the second time, asking US Health and Human Services to abide by the intent of Congress, the timing might be right. If your organization has a non-frivolous interest in this, or you are an individual with, or connected to, the means to support what will certainly be a costly engagement, please contact me: [email protected] and I will connect you to the party that made the inquiry. I previously wrote about this strategy here at the Huffington Post.

 

Applying a Health Lens to Decision-Making in Non-Health Sectors: in-laying “health performance measures”

This is the intriguing title of a new report (93 pages): Applying a Health Lens to Decision-Making in Non-Health Sectors. The document is a workshop summary from the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. The report begins: “Health is influenced by a wide range of factors, many of which fall outside the healthcare delivery sector.” Demographics, race, education, poverty and family structure are among factors in the mix. The U.S. is noted as being slower to “intersectoral engagement for health” than most Western nations. Some best practices are emerging here and are reported. Leaders from federal agencies related to environment, military, transportation and housing offer reports on action underway. One useful direction discussed: built in “health performance measures” throughout the system. The speaker from the US Department of Transportation noted that they have no such requirements yet, to consider the health outcomes of their actions.

Comment: As a non-practitioner whose first connection to these fields was an attraction to the idea of practitioners who saw their core responsibility as empowering patients to better care for themselves, the elements of health creation – in and out of direct patient care - have continued as a core interest. The humbling reality for all healthcare practitioners is that clinical medicine is viewed as being as low as 10% of the contributing factors most responsible for the health of people. This report is aligned with the mission of the National Prevention, Public Health and Health Promotion Council created under the Affordable Care Act. The goal of the Council, as stimulated by work from the Samueli Institute, is specifically to get all of the agencies with a hand in health outcomes to the same table to think and work toward health from a whole system perspective. While a start, this is proving to be as yet a somewhat remedial step toward what more progressive nations are already doing in whole system health practice. The IOM report does include some bright lights including the Department of Defense’s Operation Livewell. Ultimately we need to health notes as a requirement attachment to policy and action in the way that responsible governing in the 1970s started required that fiscal notes begin to be attached.