MHealthy program wins national award

MHealthy: Focus on Diabetes, the University's groundbreaking program to eliminate or reduce co-pays for diabetes medications, received one of two Driving Value in Health Care Awards at the Advancing Value Driven Health Care Incentives and Rewards Symposium in Philadelphia.

The conference is a two-day employer workshop on the implementation of the Value Driven Health Care initiative, a movement to develop standardized methods for quality and pricing of health care in order to provide that information to consumers.

The award was announced by the National Business Coalition on Health, The Leapfrog Group and Bridges to Excellence, and is given to a health care purchaser or health plan that has created an innovative strategy for encouraging better health care decisions on the part of consumers.

Allison Rosen, assistant professor of internal medicine and health management and policy accepted the award.

"We implemented this program to improve both the quality and value of care for the U-M community," says Rosen, the principal investigator of the Focus on Diabetes evaluation. "It is our hope that a rigorous evaluation of the impact of these targeted value-based copay reductions may help inform the efforts of other employers and insurers trying to improve the value of their health care spending.

MHealthy: Focus on Diabetes is a two-year pilot program launched in July 2006 that reduces or eliminates co-pays for selected medications for U-M employees and dependents who have diabetes.

Participants also receive educational materials on the health benefits of medication adherence and the benefits of the drugs selected for co-pay reductions. The goal of the program is to encourage the proper and sustained use of specific drugs that help people manage their diabetes and to help prevent or reduce the long-term complications of the disease.

For more information, visit www.mhealthy.umich.edu/improve/diabetes.html.

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