2020 is the year you get your measurement efforts up to speed!

By J. Brian Cassel and Kathleen Kerr

Having the right data is critical to sustaining, improving and growing our palliative care services – but so many of us struggle with our evaluation programs. The prospect of developing a measurement plan, much less implementing one, can feel daunting, and all too often this important work gets set aside as we tend to other urgent priorities and demands.

Having a good understanding of how to develop and implement a solid measurement plan can make jumping in much easier. Here is our approach to plan development:

• Understand the essential building blocks for effective measurement –the tools and processes that support data acquisition, data analysis, and reporting.
• Pick specific measures that align with your stakeholder needs and interests.
• Learn how to measure across domains, to get trustworthy and useful information about clinical, operational and financial processes and outcomes.
• Assess the current processes and assets, and identify gaps.
• Review the do’s and don’ts for using an electronic health record to support measurement and evaluation.
• Figure out how to motivate your team and other stakeholders to support measurement, by collecting data, investing in evaluation, and using findings to support improvement.
• Design and implement a feasible measurement plan, in a way that accounts for your resources and goals.

If that sounds right to you, consider attending Developing and Implementing a Measurement Plan for your Palliative Care Program, which will be offered on March 24, 2020, as a full-day pre-conference workshop at NHPCO’s Leadership & Advocacy Conference (Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, MD). Over the course of the day, our five expert faculty members will guide your team through all of the above.

Even better, our faculty will work with you in the 12 months after the workshop to help you tackle expected and unexpected challenges as you implement your plan (at no additional charge).

Whether you have a mature program and it’s time to retool your measurement activities, or if you are just getting started in palliative care and you want to measure smart right from the beginning, the workshop should help you move from dreaming about effective measurement to actually doing it.

Suggested articles of interest include:

• "How Are ACOs Prioritizing Palliative Care And Other Serious Illness Strategies?" in Health Affairs.
• "Improving Serious Illness Care in Medicare Advantage: New Regulatory Flexibility for Supplemental Benefits" from Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy.

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Register for the Leadership and Advocacy Conference by January 31, 2020 to capture the early-bird registration rate.  More information about the LAC 2020 is available online.