Acting Together to Stem the Rise in Health Care Costs.

The Oregon Health Leadership Council is a collaborative organization working to develop practical solutions that reduce the rate of increase in health care costs and premiums so health care and insurance is more affordable to people and employers in the state. More

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What's New

Two major OHLC initiatives will close at the end of the year: the High Value Patient Centered Care demonstration and the Acute Low Back Pain pilot.

The Evidence Based Best Practices group has started new work in two areas—implementation of tools for emergency room clinicians to use for better patient care and advanced care planning.

As of September 30, 2013, more than 7,200 Oregon provider organizations with over 27,500 individuals were subscribers to the secure single sign on service. During the first nine months of 2013, close to 680,000 transactions were completed.
More News & Reports

Low Back Pain Pilot Program Ending Dec. 31

First launched Jan. 1, 2012, the intent of this two-year initiative was to demonstrate whether early physical therapy intervention could reduce overall medical costs, reduce time loss from work, and improve outcomes and patient satisfaction in the treatment of acute low back pain. Read the latest progress report for details on key lessons learned and next steps as the pilot comes to a close. October 2013 Progress Report

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Payment & Reimbursement Reform

Our Payment and Reimbursement Reform initiatives aim to implement sustainable payment options for greater efficiency and quality. More

Current work includes:

  • High Value Patient Centered Care Model—We are implementing a high value patient centered care model to provide patients with chronic and complex conditions customized, high-touch, high-tech care.

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Evidence-Based Best Practices

Our Evidence-Based Best Practices initiatives develop strategies to reduce costs and improve quality of care in high cost medical areas with consistent use of proven clinical guidelines. More

Current work includes:

  • Medical Imaging—Best practices guidelines for medical imaging are being implemented to reduce inappropriate use of imaging.
  • Low Back Pain—Our new low back pain pilot initiative offers a new option for treating low back pain: early, direct access to physical therapy.
  • Reducing Elective Deliveries—We’re working with the March of Dimes and hospitals to reduce the number of elective deliveries before 39 weeks.

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Value-Based Benefits

Our Value-Based Benefits initiative provides a model for health benefits that encourages a cost-effective approach to prevention, chronic care management and preference sensitive treatments. More

Current work includes:

  • Value-Based Benefits Design—Employers and health plans are now implementing plan designs for the large group market which address both the underuse of effective care, such as chronic care management and prevention, and the overuse of services driven more by preference or supply than evidence.

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Administrative Simplification

Our Administrative Simplification initiatives help streamline the business side of health care, resulting in cost-savings to the entire system. More

Current work includes:

  • OneHealthPort for Oregon—This free online service allows secure single sign-on to multiple local health plan provider portals. Go to OneHealthPort for Oregon.
  • Common Credentialing—We are working to identify a common solution to reduce the hassles of collecting, verifying and distributing provider data for credentialing.
  • Process Standardization—We are exploring options for the standardization of electronic data information (EDI) transactions to be implemented in Oregon.

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