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Media
Questions and Answers
Q: What diseases or conditions is the Care
Management Institute focusing on?
A: The Care Management Institute is currently
focused on the following diseases and conditions:
- asthma
- coronary artery disease
- depression
- diabetes
- elder care
- cancer
- chronic pain
- heart failure
Q: How is CMI structured?
A: Headed by co-executive directors Scott S. Young, MD, and Carolyn Days Mustille, RN, MSN, CPHQ, the Institute works through a core national staff in Oakland, California, and an extensive network of implementation physicians, project managers, and analyst/programmers in each of the KP Regions.
Q: Is the Care Management Institute a way
to cut costs for Kaiser Permanente?
A: The Care Management Institute is an
outcomes improvement initiative. The goal is to improve the
health and quality of life for Kaiser Permanente members.
CMI works with people, science, and technology in innovative
ways to achieve this goal.
Q: How is CMI different than other disease management or
clinical guideline work that is being imposed on doctors in
HMOs?
A: CMI is meant to be a service for Kaiser
Permanente physicians, not some type of clinical policy mandating
unit. In fact, the goal of CMI is to create a virtual type
of organization. What we mean by virtual is that we have a
core staff who are collating, synthesizing, distributing,
and facilitating the tremendous amount of knowledge already
existing within Kaiser Permanente. The CMI is the hub in a
hub-and-spoke system. The doctors and the health care professionals
are the spokes where all of the ideas, innovations, and expertise
lie and where the resources that CMI develops will be tailored
to meet the individual needs of KP's members.
Q: Don't care management programs take away the ability
of the individual physician to make decisions based on what
is best for the patient?
A: No, not at Kaiser Permanente. We want
to support the individual physician, but never to dictate
to him or her. CMI offers physicians up-to-the-minute scientific
knowledge and tools that assist them in practicing the art
of medicine. The critical challenge for doctors, as for professionals
in any field, is one of judgment: How do they take this ever-growing,
generalized body of knowledge and evaluate it in the context
of the individual? The goal of care management is not to achieve
uniformity of practice. It is to achieve uniformity of superior
outcomes.
Q: How are you involving the physicians in
this process?
A: Physicians and other health care professionals
are at the heart of this outcomes improvement initiative.
They work with CMI at the local level. CMI will support local
people as they learn the best ways of combining already existing
successful practices in their Region with innovative clinical
approaches from other Kaiser Permanente Regions or from outside
of the Program. CMI serves as a clearinghouse - an actively
managed, actively facilitated, knowledge-brokering clearinghouse.
Physicians and health care professionals at the local level
are responsible for sharing these new approaches and implementing
them.
Q: How do CMI programs benefit the individual member?
A: CMI provides the tools and techniques
that help Kaiser Permanente customize care for each individual
member. Part of CMI's work is to conduct studies that measure
health status and member satisfaction so we will know if the
medicine we are practicing is making people better and improving
their quality of life. CMI is developing health risk assessment
tools, life-care planning tools, and individual member knowledge
repositories that will help members take better care of their
health. CMI also is using new technologies to help Kaiser
Permanente better understand, monitor, and reach out to individual
members. Finally, CMI makes the latest in medical information
and care management tools instantaneously available to physicians
and health care professionals so that they can provide a superior
care experience for members.
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