Memphis Business Group on Health 2008—Working with Public Health
Summary
Memphis-based employers decided to work together to achieve cost containment, monitor quality and influence the development of a competitive health care market in Memphis by establishing the Memphis Business Group on Health in 1985. The mission of the Memphis Business Group on Health is to facilitate the purchase of efficient and effective health care services for the Memphis community. MBGH participated in other community based initiatives that helped lead to the development of the Healthy Memphis Common Table. MBGH has now moved its major project support for health improvement to the Healthy Memphis Common Table. MBGH determined that the most effective way to address health and health care improvements is through collective action with other stakeholders. MBGH continues to provide a forum for the business sector while also working with community stakeholders.
About Memphis Business Group on Health
In 1985 seven Memphis-based employers decided to work together to achieve cost containment, monitor quality and influence the development of a competitive health care market in Memphis. To accomplish this, they formed the Memphis Business Group on Health (MBGH), a 501c (3) not for profit organization. Today, MBGH has 37 members and affiliates that employ approximately 50,000 in the greater Memphis area. The mission of the Memphis Business Group on Health is to facilitate the purchase of efficient and effective health care services for the Memphis community. In order to accomplish this mission, MBGH members believe that:
o employers should be active in the development of the health care delivery system;
o providers should be held accountable for the quality, satisfaction and cost of services they deliver;
o accountability is reliant upon the collection, reporting and use of appropriate information; and
o Employers should use such information to select high performing providers.
MBGH supports value based purchasing for its members with information, competitive choices, and utilization management, and provides staff support for worksite wellness for employee health. The history of involvement in community initiatives is based upon the coalition's principle that employersshould be active in the development of the health care delivery system.
Memphis Business Group on Health and Public Health
MBGH has had public sector employers as members for years including City of Germantown and City of Memphis and has been actively engaged in the community. This history of active engagement in the community has included the consistent message for the need to organize around projects with common approaches to specific measurable goals and objectives for evidence based activities that can be evaluated and results shared throughout the community. This coupled with the recognition that business needs to be directly engaged in health care quality improvement for the community, MBGH participated in other community based initiatives that helped lead to the development of the Healthy Memphis Common Table.
MBGH has moved its major project support for health improvement to the Healthy Memphis Common Table. MBGH determined that the most effective way to address health and health care improvements is through collective action with other stakeholders. This has allowed MBGH to benefit from broader engagement and to in turn bring expertise and the employer purchaser perspective to the joint efforts which has helped with funding from private foundation grants. In 2007, NBCH was able to support the MBGH by providing meta leadership training for the MHCT leadership group.
The four initiatives of the MHCT that involve MBGH and public health are:
o Reversing the increase in obesity and diabetes by 2008 (the original mission when MHCT was established) involving all levels of input and action with all stakeholders
o Engaging consumers, providers, and payers to improve quality through public reporting of performance on key measures of outpatient quality of care in a project that is part of the RWJF Aligning Forces initiatives
o Hospital quality improvement collaboration under the Memphis Quality Initiative
o Chartered Value Exchange development beginning with identification of needs and involvement of stakeholders in this information collaboration
Lessons Learned and Observations
These extraordinary collaborative efforts with leadership from the Memphis Business Group on Health have shown the following:
o Necessity for longer term commitment by business leaders to deal with reality of the time and effort involved in developing the relationships that allow these stakeholders to work together effectively
o Identifying and understanding the value of community wide projects as compared to those that could be done by the business sector coalition only
o Need for examples and information for business to understand and support this long term commitment to community including how this benefits the business sector
o Call for creative approaches to engage all community stakeholders and ways to involve stakeholders at multiple levels including the development of trust
o Fact that these initiatives are sustainable with commitment and resources aligned around a common agenda
o Complexity of measures to show community wide improvement and direct attribution of project efforts to those improvements with need to look at a variety of measurement approaches such as self report surveys as well as clinical measures
o Amount of effort to maintain the group and the six working groups, many actions teams, and projects
o Importance for alignment around common goals with recognition that various stakeholders also need their own group for networking, education, and input into the agenda
