Outreach & Service

The Iowa Committee for Value in Healthcare

Overview:

The Concord Coalition has embarked on a public education campaign to raise the profile of financial challenges facing the United States. From 2005 through 2008, The Coalition conducted a “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour” consisting of public education forums focusing on our nation’s fiscal policies including the challenges presented by increasing amounts of publicly and privately held debt.  The Concord Coalition now has entered Phase II of their efforts and, in partnership with universities across the country, the Coalition has organized a Fiscal Stewardship Project charged with convening public forums to discuss and develop viable solutions to identified fiscal challenges. To increase awareness of the critical role healthcare plays in our nation’s economy, The Concord Coalition has partnered with the University of Iowa, College of Public Health and organized a fiscal advisory council on healthcare: the Iowa Committee for Value in Healthcare.

Principles for value-based health care reform

Meetings

Goal

The Iowa Committee for Value in Healthcare will identify consensus-based principles for high-value, fiscally-responsible healthcare reform.

Objectives

To reach this goal, we propose to meet the following objectives: 

  1. Assemble a committee consisting of 14-16 state-based experts who represent healthcare providers, purchasers, insurers, patients groups, and public officials;
  2. Convene three public forums to be held in Des Moines during the first three quarters of 2009; these forums will:
    1. Educate members and the public about the role healthcare plays in the nation’s economy, identify financial principles that are being incorporated into federal healthcare reform proposals and discuss how these principles will support the provision of high-value healthcare; 
    2. Identify the key components of Iowa’s healthcare system that underlie its characterization as a high-value system; 
    3. Derive consensus-based principles for reform that reflect Iowa’s expectation for high-value healthcare, and discuss the impacts of federal reform on state healthcare policy. 
  3. Produce a report that highlights the processes and outcomes that emerge from the three Committee meetings.

Resources

The Iowa Committee will succeed because: (1) The Concord Coalition is a well-known national organization that will provide superlative individual expertise and technical assistance to the Committee; (2) the Committee will capitalize on current efforts to improve the state healthcare system by including task forces and workgroups established by the Iowa General Assembly; and (3) the University of Iowa College of Public Health, which has a strong track record of collaborating with state officials and healthcare constituencies, will coordinate the three meetings in Des Moines and assist The Concord Coalition in producing and disseminating the final report.

Associated Documents