PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA- Medicare, states, and private sector programs are increasingly requiring hospitals and clinicians to improve the value of their services-and will either reward them for improvement or penalize them for failure. So it is time to take stock.

ECRI Institute's 16th Annual Conference, "How Effective Is Value-Based Purchasing in the Public and Private Sectors," to be held December 2-3, 2008, in Washington, DC, will examine whether there is sufficient precision in the definition of "value-based" programs-and in ways to measure value-to support the significant changes in regulation and reimbursement that are in the works or proposed.



This program has been carefully designed by the presidents and/or senior staff of ECRI Institute, Health Affairs, Kaiser Permanente, the Milbank Memorial Fund, the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk at Tufts Medical Center, and the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

More than 30 leading experts and implementers of policy and practice will address the issues in play now and in the near future. They will draw links between value-based programs and comparative effectiveness, patient safety, and quality. "The conference brings key constituencies face-to-face with each other. The audience, which will be limited to 150, is expected to actively interact with the speakers," says Jeffrey C. Lerner, PhD, ECRI Institute president and CEO.

The conference will include the following sessions:

1) Value-Based Purchasing at CMS and Among Private Purchasers

2) Research Panel on Whether We Can Measure and Effectively Use Data on Quality, Safety, and Cost

3) U.S. State-Based and International Programs

4) Programs and Perspectives from Hospitals and Physicians

5) Constructing Regulations for Value

6) Who Determines the Value of Technology? A Case Study of Orthopedic and Cardiac Implants

7) Political Prospects for Developing Incentives for Value-Based Purchasing

Confirmed speakers and moderators include the following:

* Cybele Bjorklund, Staff Director-Majority Staff Subcommittee on Health, U.S. House of Representatives

* Kevin J. Bozic, MD, MBA, Associate Professor in Residence, Department of Orthopedic Surgery and the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco

* Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

* The Honorable Eileen Cody, 34th Legislative District, Chair, Health Care and Wellness Committee, House of Representatives, State of Washington