HPM student offers efficient, humane care to Medicare patients with chronic illness
| May 01, 2013 | |
Dr. Ken Coburn. Photo by Amanda Voisard, for The Washington Post
The innovative health care provided by Ken Coburn, MD, MPH, caught the attention of The Washington Post recently. Coburn, a student in the executive doctoral program in health leadership offered by the Gillings School of Global Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, is founder, chief executive officer and medical director for Health Quality Partners, based in Doylestown, Pa.
According to Ezra Klein, in an April 28 article in The Post, “[Health Quality Partners] enrolls Medicare patients with at least one chronic illness and one hospitalization in the past year. It then sends a trained nurse to see them every week, or every other month, whether they’re healthy or sick. It sounds simple and, in a way, it is. But simple things can be revolutionary.”
Klein goes on to say:
Most care-management systems rely on nurses sitting in call centers, checking up on patients over the phone. That model has mostly been a failure. And while many health systems send a nurse regularly in the weeks or months after a serious hospitalization, few send one regularly to even seemingly healthy patients.
This is a radical redefinition of the health-care system’s role in the lives of the elderly. It redefines being old and chronically ill as a condition requiring professional medical management.
Health Quality Partners’ results have been extraordinary. According to an independent analysis by the consulting firm Mathematica, HQP has reduced hospitalizations by 33 percent and cut Medicare costs by 22 percent.
Suzanne Hobbs, DrPH, associate professor of health policy and management at the Gillings School and an adviser to Coburn, says his efforts exemplify the leadership and health care quality goals of the executive doctoral program.”Ken’s visionary leadership is transforming the way we think about care delivery in this country and holds great promise for improving health care quality for us all,” Hobbs said.
Read the complete article on The Washington Post website. Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.
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