Professor to Evaluate Health-Care Quality Improvement Initiative
Press Release - October 5, 2006
Dennis Scanlon, associate professor of health policy and administration in the College of Health and Human Development, has been selected to serve as the external evaluator for an initiative sponsored by the Center for Health Care Strategies.
The center's Regional Quality Improvement Initiative, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, seeks to test Medicaid's capacity to promote systemwide improvements in chronic care delivery. The project will join Medicaid and state employee purchasers with their commercial counterparts, as well as regional health plans, consumer organizations and providers to develop cross-system strategies to coordinate and improve care for people with chronic conditions. Three sites -- Arkansas, Rhode Island, and Rochester, New York -- have been selected for the project.
Scanlon's role will be to evaluate the potential for State Medicaid programs to lead quality improvement initiatives, as well as to measure the outcomes of those initiatives in Arkansas, Rhode Island and New York.
Scanlon's research focuses on national efforts to reduce medical errors and improve health-care quality.