Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is making significant investments in community-based initiatives aimed at improving the quality, safety, and effectiveness of health care. Since 2005 alone, these investments have totaled more than $600 million. Some examples of these investments include:

The Partnership for Healthcare Excellence
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts provided start-up funding to help launch this coalition of more than 50 Massachusetts health care, business, civic, and community organizations. The Partnership is dedicated to helping consumers improve the quality of their health care. The Partnership's website has many practical suggestions about what patients can do to improve the quality, safety, and effectiveness of their own health care.

HealthCare Administrative Solutions
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts helped create and fund this non-profit organization, which focuses on administrative simplification initiatives. Healthcare Administrative Solutions has simplified the process for credentialing and re-credentialing providers by creating a single point of entry to submit credentialing information to the six participating health plans.

eRx Collaborative
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts helped create and fund this collaborative initiative to promote and enable the use of electronic prescribing in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative
Beginning in 2004, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts provided nearly $50 million to help fund the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, which is focused on establishing an electronic health record system to enhance the quality, safety, and efficiency of care in Massachusetts.

Institute for Healthcare Improvements
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts provided significant financial support to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100,000 Lives and 5 Million Lives campaigns. These nationwide efforts were designed to reduce preventable harm and avoidable deaths in U.S. hospitals.

Health Care Excellence Award

To promote safe and effective health care and help providers build on their efforts to improve the quality of care they provide, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts created the Health Care Excellence Award in 2007. The Award includes a $100,000 prize. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center received the inaugural award in 2007. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute received the second Health Care Excellence Award in 2008.

LEAD Program

Sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, The LEAD program was designed to promote transformational change in Massachusetts health care. In 2006, five health care organizations were chosen for their commitment to quality and patient safety. The CEOs of these organizations were asked to assume leadership of the LEAD initiative and to set three to five "audacious" goals for quality improvement. These health care leaders met regularly in what was called the "LEAD Community of Practice" where they discussed challenges and progress as well heard from outside experts. The program ran for 24 months, from April 2007 through March 2009 and achieved considerable success.

Below are cases studies from each participating organization. Each case study provides details of what the LEAD program accomplished at each provider group. These case studies have been written and distributed with the sole objective of sharing improvement knowledge. They are not intended to serve as endorsements or to illustrate effective or ineffective management.

Case studies from each participating organization are being finalized and will be posted here in the next few weeks.

• Atrius Health
• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Cooley Dickinson Hospital
• Mount Auburn Hospital
• New England Baptist Hospital

These case studies have been written and distributed with the sole objective of sharing improvement knowledge. They are not intended to serve as endorsements or illustrate effective or ineffective management.

Trustee Engagement

Hospital trustees are crucial to leading change in health care. They are responsible for setting the mission of their hospital. They can make health care quality and patient safety the number-one priority of their hospitals by establishing goals and closely monitoring the hospital's performance toward those goals. Working with the Massachusetts Hospital Association and the Center for Healthcare Governance we helped create a training program for hospital trustees, which provides them with information and guidance critical to their leadership mission.

So far, more than 30 hospitals and physician groups have undergone trustee education programs. In December 2008, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts issued grants of $50,000 to five more Massachusetts hospitals, allowing them to create similar courses of study.

The programs are having an impact. Trustees who have taken this training are setting aggressive and bold goals for their practices, goals that are leading to real change, reducing waste and harm, and improving the health care patients receive.