- Minnesota/New Jersey: UnitedHealthcare has announced a $15 million, three-year partnership with Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers to develop new care models for high-need patients. The insurer said Jeffrey Brenner, the coalition's executive director, will leave his post in order to lead the partnership as United's SVP of integrated health and human services. Brenner founded Camden Coalition in 2003 to address complex medical and social needs among the sickest patients (Livingston, Modern Healthcare, 1/31).
- Ohio: Cleveland-based MetroHealth System has announced plans to open an Office of Opioid Safety on July 1, which it says will be the first of its kind in northeast Ohio. The system said the office will provide educational opportunities for providers as well as the community. The office will use data and analytics to identify patients at-risk for opioid misuse. Prescribing data will be used to teach providers about policy and best practices for opioid use, the system said (Gooch, Becker's Hospital Review, 2/1; MetroHealth release, 2/1).
- Texas: The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has been awarded a $1 million grant to examine how plastic products used in neonatal intensive care units—such as IVs and catheters—affect the long-term health of children. Specifically, for the next few years, the study will monitor the health of about 1,000 children, currently between 3 and 10 years old, who were admitted as infants at a NICU at 15 different locations. The National Institutes of Health allocated the funding as part of a seven-year initiative called Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes, which examines how a range of exposures affect children's health (Durben Hirsch, Hospitals & Health Networks, 2/1).
3 steps to prioritize population health interventions
Explore three steps you can take to establish each patient’s current and future risk level, the root causes of the patient’s health risks, and which interventions would make the biggest impact.