National Honors for Excellus BlueCross BlueShield Announced Today

UTICA, NY – Two Excellus BlueCross BlueShield programs, Community Conversations on Compassionate Care (CCCC) and Performance Improvement Coaching, are among the seven initiatives honored today by the BlueCross BlueShield Association with BlueWorks® Awards for their innovative and successful approaches to improving the quality and value of health care for consumers. BlueWorks® Awards are presented by BCBSA in collaboration with the Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy.

Community Conversations on Compassionate Care was honored in the category Best Practices in Empowering Consumers and Providers.

Community Conversations on Compassionate Care is a program developed by Excellus BlueCross BlueShield to help individuals over 18 years of age complete health care proxies and living wills. The judges noted, “The program is valuable not only because it is tackling one of the most important problems in healthcare today, but also because it is available (via the CompassionAndSupport.org web site) to the community beyond Excellus BCBS members.”

CCCC sessions are held regularly across upstate New York at which healthy individuals learn the importance of advance care planning, conversations among loved ones and completion of health care proxies and living wills. These legal documents allow an individual to select a spokesperson, and an alternate, to make health care decisions should he/she be unable to communicate. In these documents, individuals can clearly state wishes and preferences for ongoing quality of life and end-of-life care.

“Without advance care planning, families and loved ones are left guessing an individual’s wishes regarding medical care, life-sustaining treatments and if the resulting quality-of-life would be acceptable to the individual,” said Dr. Patricia Bomba, Excellus BCBS vice president and medical director for geriatrics.

Community Conversations on Compassionate Care are an outgrowth of the Community-wide End-of-Life/Palliative Care Initiative that was launched in Rochester, New York in 2001 and includes advance care planning booklets; posters; brochures; workshops; videos; and a Web site (http://www.CompassionAndSupport.org).

Completion rates for advance directives have stagnated nationally at around 30 percent. Upstate New York surpasses that with completion rates of 35 percent in the Utica/Rome/North Country region, 40 percent in Central New York and 44 percent each in the Southern Tier and Western New York. The highest completion rate for advance directives, 47 percent, is in the Finger Lakes Region where the community conversations began in 2002.

Performance Improvement Coaching Program was honored in the category Emergent Programs in Promoting Better Care.

Keeping current with the latest quality standards and certifications is vital to delivering the highest quality health care. But finding the time and external resources to obtain this information or complete necessary course work can be challenging for busy physicians.

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield recognized that physicians could benefit from expert practice consultants. Through the Performance Improvement Coaching Program, nurses from Excellus BCBS provide on-sight assistance to physicians at no cost. By making the extra-curricular training more manageable, physicians are able to participate and complete the necessary practice improvement modules at their own pace and discretion.

The pilot program measured those physicians in the Excellus BCBS network who needed to renew their certification in 2008-2009. Of those physicians, 44 percent were engaged in the pilot and, of those, 83 percent participated in all program components.

“These winning programs are prime examples of the work Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies are doing in their communities to enhance health care delivery and provide consumers with the information they need to make more informed health care decisions,” said Scott P. Serota, BCBSA president and CEO. “Through these innovative programs, Blue companies are demonstrating their commitment to improving health care quality, value and access.”

For more information about this year’s winning programs and other Harvard-recognized programs that have been awarded the BlueWorks distinction, please visit http://www.bcbs.com/innovations/blueworks/.

National Honors for Excellus BlueCross BlueShield Announced Today

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