Fifteen CEOs of Minnesota health care organizations and health plans have come together to work on pressing issues to improve the health of our communities, beginning with opioids and mental health. Read their pledge, below. They are providing subject matter experts from their organizations to explore the issues and recommend actions, with ICSI serving as the backbone organization, convening and providing support for these efforts.
Addressing the Opioid Crisis: This body of work focuses on limiting the excess supply of opioids, identifying and intervening with high-risk opioid use populations to decrease adverse events, and improving access to adequate pain control for those who are on opioids for chronic pain. This work builds on promising efforts by many organizations that are already showing results in Minnesota.
In a May 3, 2017 Minnesota Public Radio interview entitled As Opioid Deaths Increase, is Anyone Changing their Behavior?, Hennepin County Medical Center's Charles Reznikoff, MD, talks about how this effort gives him hope that Minnesota will make progress on the opioids crisis.
Addressing Mental Health Needs: This body of work begins with two focus areas: 1) Further advancing behavioral health integration in order to build capacity in both primary care and mental health and to provide care in the setting that best meets patient needs and preferences, and 2) Improving the response to urgent and emergent mental health needs to decrease the burden experienced by emergency departments.
We look forward to the next steps in these collaborative efforts, and will share more information as the work progresses. If you have questions, please contact Claire Neely, MD, ICSI's chief medical officer.
The Pledge
“We, the undersigned Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of health care organizations in the Upper Midwest, recognize our role and responsibility to improve the health of our communities, and pledge to collaborate on specific and persistent problems that cannot be solved by any individual entity or solely through competition. These systemic issues cause significant hardships to the populations we serve, and require cross cutting collaboration in order to achieve desired change.
A single approach may not work everywhere, and this effort will require diverse perspectives and may include partnerships with other organizations as needed. We agree that we will jointly select specific pressing problems to address together, commit our collective expertise to designing innovative solutions, and collaboratively implement new approaches to care that lower cost and improve health for all of our patients.
We understand that the success of this work requires our personal leadership and focused influence, as well as the commitment and resources of our respective organizations. We further commit to a constancy of purpose, to ensure that we achieve the aims we set out to accomplish together.”
Updated 05/09/17