The Partnership for Innovation

The Partnership for Innovation will help realize Group Health's vision of delivering affordable excellence for its patients by pilot-testing cost-effective approaches that have the potential to improve patient care.

Group Health medical teams — on the front lines of patient care every day — are poised to identify new strategies to create healthier lives for patients. The Partnership for Innovation helps bring these ideas to life through the research expertise of the Group Health Research Institute, the daily efforts of our clinical teams, and the generous funding of Foundation donors.

This powerful collaboration between care delivery, cutting-edge research, and philanthropy can provide answers to the big challenges in health care. Over the last five years, the Group Health Foundation received 77 applications and awarded nearly $2.8 million in grants to fund 31 innovative pilot projects, including more than $700,000 granted in 2012.

2012

Walk & Talk With Your Care Team

• Department: Activity, Sport and Exercise Medicine
• Potential benefits: Increase physical activity among staff and patients by offering a group-based walk every Saturday morning at Group Health clinics.

Improve Medication Therapy in Patients With Dementia

• Department: Pharmacy Clinical Specialty Services
• Potential benefits: Reduce risk of prescribing drug combinations that may have adverse side effects by educating providers and caregivers.

Improving Adherence to Chronic Medications in Medicare Part D PPO Patients

• Department: Medicare Pharmacy Administration
• Potential benefits: Improve health outcomes by increasing adherence to chronic medications for Medicare patients.

Pharmacy Network, New Member Program

• Department: Pharmacy
• Potential benefits: Engage and educate members who receive care in the community network outside of Group Health Medical Centers to reduce medication costs and improve quality.

Addressing Cancer Disparities in Patients With Limited English Proficiency

• Department: Quality Improvement and Internal Medicine
• Potential benefits: Test the training of specially certified medical interpreters to deliver scripted colorectal cancer screening messages at the time of medical encounter for patients with low English proficiency.

Rapid Molecular Clonal Diagnosis of E. Coli Uropathogens

• Department: Laboratory
• Potential benefits: Evaluate and characterize urinary E. Coil infections to improve patient care, decrease exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics, and reduce recurrent E. Coli infections.

Teledermatology

• Department: Dermatology
• Potential benefits: Evaluate a process where a family practice provider electronically routes clinical photographs to a dermatologist potentially in lieu of a physical referral and visit.

Advance Care Planning: Refining an IT-Based Approach to Communication and Documentation

• Department: Quality & Informatics
• Potential benefits: Group Health will roll out a new video decision aid for advance care planning. Part of the success of that effort will be documenting the results of the provider conversation with patients about end-of-life care options in an efficient, consistent way and recording it in the patient's electronic medical record.

Reducing Low-Value Care

• Department: Quality & Informatics
• Potential benefits: Help Group Health achieve affordable excellence by improving quality and patient safety (through decreasing unnecessary procedures) while simultaneously reducing cost.

Use of Specialty Pharmacy to Standardize, Monitor, Improve Adherence and Cost Effectiveness of Triple Therapy for Hepatitis C

• Department: Gastroenterology, Pharmacy
• Potential benefits: Pharmacists will partner with consultative internal medicine providers and nursing staff to collaboratively manage patients treated with triple therapy for hepatitis C. This pilot will be rolled out at Tacoma Medical Center and Bremerton East Specialty Center.

Medical Assistant-Delivered Health Coaching for Adult Obesity

• Department: Clinical Improvement and Prevention
• Potential benefits: The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is an evidence-based lifestyle intervention to address obesity in adult Group Health members. It is a group-based, year-long intervention developed and tested by the National Institutes of Health and disseminated by the CDC. The pilot will explore approaches for implementing DPP as an obesity-specific intervention in up to three populations, and establish a foundation for full implementation of the program, if it proves successful.

2011

Improving Patient Understanding of Medications at Skilled Nursing Facility Discharge

• Department: Nursing Home Services and Internal Medicine
• Potential benefits: Could lead to a decrease in hospital readmissions and/or emergency room visits after discharge, ultimately improving patient satisfaction.

Diabetes Self-Management Program Pilot

• Department: Chronic Care
• Potential benefits: Addressing multiple topics of interest to patients with diabetes — including nutrition, blood glucose levels, and stress management — the pilot program seeks to improve health outcomes for patients while increasing patient and staff satisfaction.

Home Phototherapy for Psoriasis

• Department: Dermatology
• Potential benefits: Home phototherapy has the potential to provide a safe, inexpensive, and convenient alternative for the treatment of severe psoriasis in Group Health patients.

Countdown to Healthy Living, Phase II

• Department: Pediatrics
• Potential benefits: Addresses the needs in the treatment of pediatric obesity by providing integrated care for patients within the existing Group Health medical home and chronic disease care model. This program has the potential to provide effective behavior modification in enrolled families.

Centering Pregnancy: Group Health Prenatal Care

• Department: Midwifery Groups at Group Health Medical Centers Bellevue, Capitol Hill Campus, Olympia, Tacoma
• Potential benefits: Centering pregnancy is a model of group prenatal care that integrates health assessment, education, and support in a learning atmosphere impossible to recreate in an exam room. Group sessions help normalize the pregnancy experience as women share their concerns and their coping mechanisms. This model of care can potentially improve perinatal outcomes, as well as patient and staff satisfaction.

2010

Countdown to Healthy Living, Phase 1

• Department: Pediatrics
• Potential benefits: Improves quality of care through the establishment of a new standard in treating pediatric obesity. Increased staff, provider, and patient engagement through the optimization of the medical home model.

Improving Chronic Illness Care

• Department: Primary Care
• Potential benefits: Improves coordination and collaboration across providers caring for patients with multiple chronic conditions leading to improved outcomes and integrated care for patients.

A New Approach to Complex Adult Spinal Surgery

• Department: Neurosurgery
• Potential benefits: Increases patient safety with fewer surgical complications within 30 days and lower hospital readmission rates.

Reducing Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging

• Department: Radiology
• Potential benefits: Reduces the variation in radiation exposure among CT technologists and decreases radiation exposure (and the associated cancer risk) for patients and radiology staff.

Nurse-Supported, Web-Based Education Program for Depression

• Department: Behavioral Health Services
• Potential benefits: Easy, convenient way for patients to get care while integrating primary care and mental health treatment using a cost-effective, web-based resource limiting the need for in-person psychotherapy.

Treating Opioid Addiction in the Primary Care Clinic

• Department: Primary Care
• Potential benefits: Integrates medical treatment for addiction into the medical home, increasing access to potentially life-saving care with fewer patients sent outside Group Health for costly addiction treatment.

Outpatient Orthopedic Ultrasound

• Department: Orthopedics
• Potential benefits: Reduces the time from diagnosis to treatment for patients resulting in fewer patient visits and a subsequent reduction in cost by minimizing the use of high-end imaging procedures.

2009

Risk Reduction in Prescribing Long-Term Opioids for Chronic Non-Malignant Pain

• Department: Physical Medicine
• Potential benefits: Improves management of chronic opiate prescribing for non-terminal patients on high-dose regimens.

Integrating Behavioral Health Specialty Consultation into the Medical Home

• Department: Behavioral Health
• Potential benefits: Increases outpatient support for chemical dependency patients, and encourages collaboration between primary care and behavioral health providers.

2008

Improving Care for Young Healthy Options Families

• Department: Pediatrics and Obstetrics
• Potential benefits: By applying medical home principles, addresses low-health literacy barriers, and provides higher quality prenatal and pediatric care.

Enhancing Medication Safety for Patients With Complex Medication Regimens

• Department: Pharmacy
• Potential benefits: Increases patient medication compliance, and reduces complications from misused and missed medications.

Painless Nasal Flu Vaccine for Children

• Department: Pediatrics
• Potential benefits: Provides painless administration, vaccinates more kids, and results in fewer serious illnesses and hospitalization.

Online Chronic Disease Self-Management Program

• Department: Health Information and Promotion
• Potential benefits: Teaches patients to self-manage chronic conditions, removes scheduling issues, and increases access to care.

Optimal Eye Care for Diabetic Patients to Prevent Blindness

• Department: Eye Care
• Potential benefits: Reduces serious eye problems, and eliminates separate appointment for screening.

Infectious Disease in Long-Term Care Facilities

• Department: Occupational Health
• Potential benefits: Prevents widespread outbreak of flu in skilled nursing facilities, increases compliance, and realizes a new revenue source.