Regional Quality Initiative

Aligning Forces for Quality

No single health care provider, purchaser or payer can improve care for chronic conditions throughout a community on its own.  To improve chronic care throughout a region or state, key stakeholders in the health care marketplace must implement coordinated strategies at the purchaser, health plan, provider, and consumer level.  When this health care system alignment occurs, major breakthroughs in improving health care quality can be achieved.

The Arkansas RQI initiative is targeting quality improvement breakthroughs in four clinical areas: comprehensive diabetes care, cervical cancer screening, well-child visits, and preventive services for adults. To create these improvements, participants are:

Supporting and expanding the state's statewide Health Information Exchange;
Standardizing and aggregating health care data across multiple payers to calculate measures which will drive coordinated quality improvement efforts; and Sharing performance measures across payers at a regional level.

The Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care and Arkansas Medicaid are leading the coalition, which represents over 1.1 million covered lives.  The leaders have selected a set of performance measures and engaged a comprehensive group of regional stakeholders - approximately 30 to date - including:

• American College of Physicians
• Arkansas Health Care Association and Hospital Association
• Arkansas State Employees Insurance Plan
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield
• Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
• Employers’ Health Coalition
• QualChoice of Arkansas
• Wal-Mart