Medical Solutions - Trade Show Takeaways

The last medical solutions blog introduced 3 key events that the medical solutions team would be participating in. Read on for the takeaways:

Owens & Minor Healthcare Supplier Diversity Symposium: Creating a Formulary for Sustainable Success in the Healthcare Supply Chain 

The 8th Annual HealthCare Supplier Diversity Symposium (HSDS) was held in Short Pump, Richmond, Virginia on September 23-24, 2013. From humble beginnings - the first symposium originated in a conference room - to the fanfare of opening the 8th Annual Symposium: The symposium provided an excellent format for discussion and discovery this year. 

Sponsored by Owens & Minor in partnership with Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council (VMSDC), the Healthcare Supplier Diversity Alliance (HSDA), and the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE), this year's HSDS discussed: 

• The challenges of minority businesses to scale and innovate in the face of healthcare reform and healthcare technology convergence  
• The opportunities for minority businesses to partner together and identify single source and innovative solutions to support healthcare systems  
• The importance of technology in supporting efficiency, effectiveness and validating measurements and continued improvement 
• The importance of understanding the healthcare use case 
• The power of healthcare - diverse supplier relationships in Virginia - the extension of the model throughout the US 
• The opportunity for thought leadership and true diversity of thought in healthcare through impacts and influences from all other industries - must adopt mental shift to adapt to physical change 

For daily promotion of how to create a formulary for sustainable success in the healthcare supply chain, continue discovery by: 

• Reading Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect.  Excerpted from the medicigroup.com [Johansson takes us to a] place where ideas and concepts from diverse industries, cultures, departments, and disciplines collide, ultimately igniting an explosion of ideas leading to extraordinary innovations. THE MEDICI EFFECT has been translated into 18 languages.  
• Researching and leveraging your local National Minority Supplier Development Council - www.nmsdc.org 
• Signing up for supplier diversity partnerships in the healthcare industry: http://www.hsdafordiversity.org 

Indiana Employee Health & Wellness Summit 

Behavior Change Process
Wellness Programs are built to inspire behavior changes in the population. Within the behavior change continuum:

• 5% of the battle is making the population aware of what programs are available through education
• 25% is to equip providers and participants with the skills and tools necessary to administer and participate in those programs
• 30% of the process is spent on motivating providers and participants to be a part of the programs
• 40% of the effort is spent on setting the environment and policies to cope with the programs

Actionable Results
In the continuum, the medical solutions group aims to help organizations:

• Collect the (biometric screening event or wellness) data
• Convert that data in to useful information (benchmarks and integrated data)
• Use that information to gain insight through (custom reporting)

Employers' Forum of Indiana

Discussions were centered around the Affordable Care Act and its impacts on the self-insured employers as well as Wellness Program changes. The Act is supposed to create new incentives and build on existing Wellness Programs and encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces. The Act goes on to define categories for workplace Wellness Programs:

"Participatory" Wellness Programs generally are available without regard to an individual's health status (i.e. fitness center membership discounts, no-cost health education seminars, incentivizing employees to complete health risk assessments, etc.).

"Health-Contingent" Wellness Programs generally requires individuals to meet a specific standard related to their health to obtain a reward (i.e. providing rewards for those who do not use/decrease the use of tobacco, providing rewards to those who achieve a specified biometric reading target, etc.)

The Affordable Care Act also increases the maximum permissible reward from 20% to 30% of the cost of health coverage and further increases the maximum reward to as much as 50% for programs designed to prevent or reduce tobacco use (http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fswellnessprogram.html).

EXTRA: Life Sciences Summit

This year, the Indiana Life Sciences Summit had three focuses:

• The politics of innovation in healthcare with Indiana's answers to the politics of innovation in healthcare (participants were: Hill & Knowlton Strategies, Cook Group, Wellpoint, Biomet Biologics and Roche Diagnostics). The politics of innovation in healthcare analyzed the healthcare trends, government regulations and political influences in the healthcare industry. 
• The Indiana Biosciences Research Institute: A Collaboration to Innovate Smarter, Faster and Better
• Weathering the Capital Crunch Life Sciences Funding Opportunities and Challenges