Dear Mayor:
As a result of
the League’s affiliation with the Mayors Wellness
Campaign and the New Jersey Health Care Quality
Institute (NJHCQI), we are able to make available to
you and your town’s residents a number of health
care tools. I want to encourage you to take
advantage of these free and easy to use tools and to
make them available to your residents on your
municipal webpage by linking back to the New Jersey
Health Care Quality Institute webpage at
www.njhcqi.org
The health
care tools available through NJHCQI are:
“How’s
Your Health, NJ?” – This is a simple and
easy to use health risk assessment survey designed
to help New Jersey residents improve their health by
fostering better communication with their medical
providers. “How’s Your Health, NJ?” is a free,
anonymous, confidential, and user-friendly
ten-minute survey. There is no advertising on the
site and no personal identifiers (cookies) are
collected. Upon completion of the survey, each
respondent can immediately print the results of
their assessment as well as a customized education
packet on preventive care and chronic illness
management. They can also print an outline of their
results to share with their doctor and specifically
designed to help boost effective communication with
doctors and other health care providers. The League
and the Mayors Wellness Campaign is currently in
discussions with the Quality Institute on developing
a customized “How’s Your Health” survey for
municipalities (eg. “How’s Your Health, Trenton?”).
This new project would enable towns to add a few
questions to the survey specific to your
municipality (eg. “Does your town have enough bike
paths?”). I will keep you updated on this effort
and would appreciate your feedback.
HealthGrades – The NJHCQI has partnered
with “HealthGrades” – a national leader in health
care quality information – to bring user-friendly
and the most up-to-date health care quality
information to New Jersey’s consumers. Using its
objective health care provider ratings and expert
advisory services, HealthGrades works with
providers, employers, payers, and patients to offer
targeted information that can promote the
utilization of quality health care. HealthGrades
partnership makes it possible for consumers:
- To search
for a hospital by procedure or diagnosis, geographic
location, and compare hospitals on those specific
procedures via HealthGrades quality ratings
- To search
for a physician by specialty or geographic location
- To see
previously restricted information about physicians,
such as whether a physician has been professionally
sanctioned
- To provide
rating and feedback information about their
physicians and the quality of care they receive.
NJHCQI
provides this comparative information on the health
care quality of all hospitals, physicians and
nursing homes in New Jersey, New York, and
Pennsylvania . . . and it’s all free of charge!
Leapfrog Patient Safety Initiative –
Created by the Business Roundtable with support from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Leapfrog
Group was founded to help save lives and reduce
preventable medical mistakes by giving consumers the
information they need to make more informed health
care choices. Hospitals which participate in
Leapfrog provide important information on the
efforts they are making to reduce preventable
medical errors and implement safety improvements.
All this data is available on the NJHCQI website.
Given their commitment to patient safety and the
reduction of medical errors hospitals participating
in the Leapfrog survey make good choices for care.
Mayors
Wellness Campaign – As you know, the Mayors
Wellness Campaign provides a wealth of resources on
its webpage (www.mayorswellnesscampaign.org
) in the area of fitness and nutrition. The
complete Mayors Wellness Campaign “toolbox” is
available on the site as well.
Links
to State of New Jersey Data – The NJHCQI
website also allows residents to link to important
health care quality data through the New Jersey
Department of Health and the New Jersey Division of
Consumer Affairs. The Division of Consumer Affairs
is about to make available drug pricing information
for each pharmacy in the state to give citizens a
powerful new tool to shop around for the best
price. This Drug Price Registry resulted from a
study conducted by the Quality Institute and will be
linked to the Institute’s website as soon as the
state releases it.
The Mayors
Wellness Campaign and the New Jersey Health Care
Quality Institute has offered to assist towns which
want to make this valuable information available to
its residents. Please contact MWC Director Judy
Doyle by phone at 609-393-4931 or by email at
jdoyle@njhcqi.org .
This is a
wonderful opportunity for towns to provide useful
health information to their residents at no cost and
I am hopeful many of you will take advantage of it.
Very truly
yours,
William G.
Dressel, Jr.
Executive
Director
NJLM
222 West State
Street
Trenton, NJ
08608
