As the year comes to a close, it is an appropriate time to look back at some of the ways that Partners HealthCare’s world-class hospitals, clinicians, researchers and other team members helped change delivery of health care in 2011. Last week, CBS News unveiled its list of the top health stories of 2011, and we are proud to say that Brigham and Women’s groundbreaking face transplant procedures serve as the cover story for this online feature. As the first surgery of its kind in the United States, this transplant exemplifies our mission of applying the latest medical research advances to improve the care and treatment of our patients.

As Dr. Bo Pomahac wrote on this blog earlier this year, “Partners HealthCare hospitals stand at the forefront of innovation and medical breakthroughs. Our research teams, working side by side, focus on bringing scientific discovery to our patients to improve their lives. We believe in sharing our knowledge and our success with the world so future generations may benefit.”

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This morning’s Boston Globe features a piece by columnist Steve Syre, which points out that some of Boston’s best-known providers, including Partners Healthcare, are working with the federal government on an initiative focused on delivering high-quality care at lower costs.

This initiative is known as the Pioneer ACO (Accountable Care Organization) program. Syre points out, “The commitment to the Pioneer program – the more aggressive of at least two cost-conscious pilot plans Medicare offered to health care providers – certainly feels like an important threshold to cross.”

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Following a rigorous strategic planning process, Partners Community Health recently identified three priority areas of focus in order to increase our commitment to the communities we serve. These three strategies – enhancing access to health care, building tomorrow’s health care workforce and improving the health and well-being of communities through prevention – will help us meet our goals of positively impacting the overall health of low income and vulnerable people.

Access

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There is no question that the health care industry is in the midst of an exciting and historic period of change as the health care community focuses on improving care and lowering costs. At Partners HealthCare, we want to be part of the solution to these key issues, and we embrace our responsibility to be innovators as well as leaders.

As reported in this morning’s Boston Globe, Partners has been selected by the federal government to participate in a new Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model. This initiative, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center, focuses on enhanced care coordination as the means to provide Medicare patients with high quality, cost-efficient care. Partners is one of just 32 health care organizations across the country – including five here in Massachusetts – chosen to test the effectiveness of the Pioneer ACO. This makes our Commonwealth among the most penetrated markets in terms of Medicare beneficiaries participating in this new model. The program, which has the potential to slow cost-growth in the long term, will begin January 1st for nearly 150,000 Medicare patients in Massachusetts (45,000 here at Partners).

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A front-page piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe detailed the efforts of Dr. Betsy Nabel, President of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to ambitiously expand BWH’s campus to include a new clinical and research building – all while simultaneously cutting expenses by $160 million over the next three years. Pursuing cutting-edge research innovations while ensuring efficient and cost-effective care for existing BWH patients, Dr. Nabel and her team are exemplifying the broader mission of Partners HealthCare to deliver quality, affordable care across our system.

As a nationally recognized thought leader in medicine, Dr. Nabel has a well-documented track record of leading research efforts to diagnose, treat and ultimately prevent disease. (Most recently, you may recall she authored a post on this site in which she detailed the BWH’s innovative Profile database to better target cancer treatments). However, as she related to the Globe, she also believes the next generation of doctors must be fluent not only in providing excellent care, but also in boosting efficiency.

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With the unemployment rate hovering at 9 percent nationwide, generating new employment opportunities continues to be a major focus for all sectors. Health care is no different, and as the largest private employer in the Commonwealth, Partners HealthCare has put an increased emphasis on investing in jobs and careers for our state’s economic health.

That’s why Spaulding Rehabilitation Network (SRN), the rehabilitation provider of Partners HealthCare, teamed up with the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) to establish the ‘Working Partners’ program, a first of its kind public/private partnership that gives qualified persons with disabilities the skills and support they need to help them join the work force and improve their overall quality of life. For those living with a disability, finding a job can be especially difficult. Whether newly injured or living with a physical or mental disability through a lifetime, barriers to employment can seem insurmountable; in fact, the unemployment rate for those with disabilities is more than 50 percent higher than the general population.

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