CHT Member Meeting - Leadership and Collaboration
| Date: May 12, 2006 | Location: Atlanta,GA |
Our first CHT Member Meeting held in Georgia was a huge success. The CHT "Leadership and Collaboration" conference, held on Friday, May 12, in Atlanta, marked another milestone in the progress of the Georgia Project in achieving its goal of creating a state model for the development of an intelligent health system that saves lives and saves money.
On May 12, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding joined CHT founder Newt Gingrich and CHT CEO Nancy Desmond to celebrate the next phase of CHT's Healthy Georgia Diabetes and Obesity Project, the comprehensive statewide diabetes program which utilizes a pay-for-performance initiative to expand quality care for people with diabetes.
After welcoming remarks from Nancy Desmond and an introduction by Speaker Gingrich, Governor Perdue delivered remarks to attendees of the conference: "I am very pleased to announce a major step toward a common goal of better healthcare at lower cost, inspired by the Center for Health Transformation," said the Governor. "We are teaming up with CHT to participate in the Bridges to Excellence Diabetes Care Link program...Georgia will be first state health benefit plan to participate in the Bridges to Excellence Program, and we are delighted to do that. I want to be a model in healthcare; we know how important it is."
Under the new initiative, Georgia physicians who care for the 640,000 state employees, teachers, retirees and dependents covered under the State Health Benefit Plan will receive incentive payments for providing better quality diabetes care. The State of Georgia now joins fourteen large employers and the state's major insurers in implementing the BTE Diabetes Care Link Program in Georgia. Physician recruitment efforts are underway with WellStar Health System announcing the NCQA certification of the first 12 physicians from this initiative and the plans to have a total of 50 physicians certified by the end of the summer. For more information on the employers, physicians and insurers currently participating in the Georgia Bridges to Excellence Project, click here.
Following Governor Perdue's announcement, CDC Director Gerberding spoke to participants at the conference about the grave and costly effects of diabetes. Dr. Gerberding praised the collaborative work organized by the Center, and reflected on her hopes that our work in Georgia will inform other health transformation efforts across the nation: "You're not complacent, you're thinking big, and you're definitely exhibiting the kind of connected leadership that solving the diabetes problem is going to take. And I think that this is really one of the most exciting enterprises and undertakings that I have seen in a long time."
The opening session of the Leadership and Collaboration Conference was followed by three panel discussions. (Read more: Agenda with Speakers' Presentations; Speaker Biographies; Related Materials; Related Links)
Panel 1, "The Healthy Georgia Diabetes and Obesity Project," was moderated by Laura Linn, RN, MN, Project Director, CHT; other panelists included Mike Mawby, Chief Government Affairs Officer, Novo Nordisk; Dale Whitney, President, Bridges to Excellence; and Elizabeth Ofili, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.C.; Associate Dean of Clinical Research; Professor of Medicine and Director, Clinical Research Center; Chief, Section of Cardiology, Morehouse School of Medicine.
Panel 2, "Challenges & Solutions in Georgia," was comprised of Abel Ortiz, Health Policy Advisor to Governor Sonny Perdue; Ron Bachman, FSA, MAAA, Senior Fellow, Center for Health Transformation; Rhonda Medows, MD, FAAFP, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health; and Michael Vincent Smith, MD, FACC, FACS, FCCP, Vice-Chairman of Surgery, Chief of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery and Medical Director of Oncology at the Atlanta Medical Center and medical and scientific advisor, Lung Cancer Alliance.
Panelists in the day's final session, "The 21st Century Intelligent Hospital," included Newt Gingrich, CHT founder and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; Tracy Field, Attorney, Partner in the Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice Groups, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP; Robert Lipson, MD, CEO, WellStar Health System; and Ken Beverly, President & CEO, Archbold Medical Center. CHT Vice President of Operations Melissa Ferguson served as moderator of the panel.
