Midwest Health Initiative

🌟 Community Connections Recap: Stopping Chronic Disease Where It Starts 🌟 Last week, with a view of the St. Louis Arch at Vue 17, clinicians, employers, and community leaders gathered to build relationships and exchange perspectives on primary care in St. Louis! Here’s a quick recap of the key moments from Stopping Chronic Disease Where It Starts: Driving Lifestyle Change Through Primary Care. 🔹John Ziegler, Jr. from Arch Resources, Inc. opened the event with comments on the importance of a lifestyle focus in primary care from an employer’s perspective. 🔹 Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM, DipABLM, CPE President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, illuminated the path to integrating lifestyle medicine into the clinical practice of primary care, shared her collaborative care model and recanted her experience using lifestyle to drive improved patient outcomes and rediscover the joy in medicine. 🔹A panel of local clinicians – Devyani Hunt of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Jordanna Riebel of Family Care Health Centers, and Tom Landholt, MD of SSM Health – highlighted the amazing work by practices in St. Louis to integrate whole person health and emphasize team-based care. 🔹 To top it all off, Eric S Armbrecht, PhD of Saint Louis University led a group discussion identifying common paths forward in advancing lifestyle medicine in St. Louis, and played game show host as attendees competed in a high-stakes battle of Win, Lose, or Draw. Thank you to everyone who came for an engaging discussion and an active exchange of perspectives. Strong community relationships are foundational to creating lasting change, and MHI looks to continue bringing stakeholders together and fostering new connections. #communityconnections #lifestylemedicine #advancingprimarycare #MHICC

🔎As many medical procedures move to the outpatient setting, patients have more options when seeking care. Within the last few years, the number of outpatient procedures performed outside of a hospital has increased. 🏥 As the outpatient market shifts, understanding where patients choose to receive care is crucial for both health care purchasers and providers. 📊Use MHI’s NEW 2024 Inpatient & Outpatient Facility Services in a Commercially Insured Population to see which facilities and systems are rising to the top of the market in St. Louis and Kansas City. 👉 These reports are available to MHI Champions and St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition members. Contact us to learn how to access the full reports at info@midwesthealthinitiative.org or learn more at:  https://lnkd.in/gyE6kua4 #HealthcareData #StLouisHealth #KansasCityHealth #AmbulatorySurgeryCenters

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at MHI and BHC!

🚨WARNING🚨 the following statement is not at all controversial and may cause severe sense of agreement: Lifestyle factors including diet, exercise, sleep, and alcohol/tobacco use greatly affect long-term health. Employers, doctors, and many everyday people understand the concept of healthy habits. Yet chronic disease prevalence in the U.S. continues to grow, and treatment for these conditions devours hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Where are we going wrong? Are physicians properly equipped to support a patient in making lifestyle changes? Are patients prepared to adopt healthier behaviors before turning to medications that are often so easy to obtain? On December 4th, the Midwest Health Initiative is convening local primary care clinicians, employers, health systems, and community leaders to answer these questions and explore how to expand support for lifestyle medicine and make St. Louis a national leader in primary care. Learn more and request an invitation to this exclusive multi-stakeholder conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gJUzWMZg Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM, DipABLM Eric S Armbrecht, PhD Devyani Hunt Tom Landholt, MD Jordanna Riebel John Ziegler, Jr.

Congratulations to the 4 hospitals who earned an “A” on The Leapfrog Group's fall 2024 Hospital Safety Grade in St. Louis: Mercy Hospital South, MERCY HOSPITAL WASHINGTON, Mercy Hospital Jefferson, and OSF Saint Anthony's Health Center. OSF Saint Anthony's Health Center made the biggest improvements over the last year! You can see how your hospital performed on #PatientSafety here: https://lnkd.in/eG9tQeh #TheLeapfrogGroup #SafetyGrades

💊🤕 When it comes to prescription drugs, price might be the hardest pill for employers and patients to swallow. 💸➡🔥 Commercially insured St. Louisans spent nearly $1,000 more per person on pharmaceuticals in 2023 than they did in 2019. While pharmacy spending per person increased by nearly 70% during this period, prescription fill rates remained virtually unchanged.   Check out MHI’s 2024 St. Louis Health Stats scorecard here for more cost and affordability trends for the St. Louis commercial population: https://lnkd.in/gen_dCQp

Just released! The Midwest Health Initiative’s 2024 St. Louis Health Stats scorecard provides an updated look at the quality, utilization, and cost of health care for the commercially insured in St. Louis. View the full report: https://lnkd.in/gen_dCQp

🤔“What big idea would you recommend that would make St. Louis a national leader in primary care?” At its Community Connections forum in June, MHI asked local health care clinicians, purchasers, and executives what they believe needs to happen for primary care to flourish in St. Louis, and six recurring themes came to light across dozens of responses. - Implement team-based care - Payment reform to value quality over quantity - Invest in primary care as much or more than specialty care - Engage with the community to address SDOH - Support primary care practices (improve patient experience & decrease burnout) - Increase attraction of primary care to students   These themes are not inherently bold or novel ideas, but instead represent what has long been known to be necessary for supporting primary care and lowering health care spending.   Why haven’t they happened?   MHI convenes its second Community Connections on December 4th. Learn more and join the conversation to advance primary care in St. Louis at: https://lnkd.in/gJUzWMZg

📉 Shifting the Trend: Opioid Use After Hip Replacement 📉 Have you checked out MHI’s recently released report, the 2024 Hip Replacement in a Commercially Insured Population? Let us provide some highlights! The percentage of commercially insured patients filling an opioid prescription within one day of a hip replacement decreased in 2023, the first decrease since 2019. 💡 Want to know more? Learn how to access the full report by contacting us at info@midwesthealthinitiative.org or learn more at our website. This report is free to MHI Champions and BHC Members. #HealthcareData #OpioidUse #SurgicalCare #OpioidCrisis #Orthopedics

💡 Did you know musculoskeletal conditions are a top concern for St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition employers? 📊 MHI's newly released report, the 2024 Hip Replacement in a Commercially Insured Population, shows which providers in STL do the most and perform the best. This report is free to MHI Champions and BHC Members. 👉 Learn how to access the full report by contacting us at info@midwesthealthinitiative.org or learn more at our website: https://lnkd.in/gPvSH55u. #HealthcareData #HipReplacement #Orthopedics #StLouisHealth #PopulationHealth