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Ramsay Health Care Announces Strategic Alliance with ICHOM

August 05, 2015

Ramsay Health Care has announced a Strategic Alliance with the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), becoming the first multinational hospital group to partner with the US-based organisation which is focused on discovering what matters most to patients.

ICHOM is a non-profit organization founded by Professor Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School, the Swedish Karolinska Institutet, and Boston Consulting Group, to enable health care systems worldwide to measure and report patient outcomes in a standardized way.

Ramsay Health Care Managing Director Chris Rex said the Company’s Strategic Alliance with ICHOM represents the organizations’ long-term commitment to driving value in health care around the world.

“Outcomes that matter most to our patients are the ultimate measure of success in health care. When seeking treatment, patients want to know how they will fare after treatment – whether they can return to work; take care of themselves and will their symptoms improve?” Mr Rex said.

“Outcomes measurement is not about technical outputs, but focuses on key results that matter most to patients and deliver value. For example, what matters to a patient after heart surgery is ‘can they climb stairs after the surgery and by when’ (versus the technical, medical output of pump function of the heart after surgery).

“At Ramsay Health Care we are committed to delivering superior quality care throughout our hospitals for every patient, every day.  Continuous measurement of what we deliver for patients will provide a key input into innovation and quality improvement.

“Our doctors have welcomed this new measurement approach and will work together with us to measure and then benchmark patient-focused outcomes.”

Ramsay’s first areas of focus with ICHOM will be prostate cancer, low back pain, and depression and anxiety. 

Patients’ outcomes will be measured according to the recommendations of the ICHOM Standard Sets. The results of their care will be monitored for a year or more, during and after treatment, through surveys and interviews, for example on quality of life and self-sufficiency.

Since its founding in 2012, ICHOM has developed 12 Standard Sets. In the next year, ICHOM will facilitate the development of Standard Sets for up to eight more conditions, including colorectal cancer, dementia, care for older persons, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), heart failure, pregnancy and childbirth, breast cancer and congenital malformations of the skull and face.

As an ICHOM partner, Ramsay Health Care in in the good company of leading medical institutions, including the Boston Children’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and Erasmus MC in the Netherlands. 

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