October 27, 2016
(Helena, Mont.) – Mountain-Pacific Quality Health was recently awarded a contract to improve advance care planning for Hawaii Medicare beneficiaries.
The contract will be administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Mountain-Pacific will work with providers, their staff and Medicare patients to improve advance care planning in Hawaii using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Conversation Project Starter Kit and the Hawai’i Advance Healthcare Directive and/or Provider Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) – Hawai’i.
Mountain-Pacific will partner with Kokua Mau, Hawaii’s Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, with the goals of ensuring that 500 Medicare beneficiaries will have documented advance care plans by the end of the two-year contract and improving physician processes and the level of comfort in discussing advance care planning.
“Advance Care Planning is critically important for when a person may not be able to communicate their care choices. This initiative will help start discussions and plan ahead so families won’t have to make heart-wrenching decisions later,” said Lance Segawa, director of Mountain-Pacific’s Hawaii office.
The Advance Care Planning Project Manager for Hawaii is Joy Yadao, an experienced hospice and palliative care nurse and former executive director of Hawaii’s largest hospice organization. Joy knows the value of having conversations with both a physician and family members well in advance of a health care crisis. “Advance Care planning gives us the opportunity to address our values and options directly with our primary physicians and is very important in today’s complex health care system”, stated Yadao.
About Mountain-Pacific—Mountain-Pacific is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation and holds federal and state contracts that allow them to oversee the quality of care for Medicare and Medicaid members. Mountain-Pacific works within its region (Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Territories of Guam and American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) to help improve the delivery of health care and the systems that provide it. Mountain-Pacific’s goal is to increase access to high-quality health care that is affordable, safe and of value to the patients they serve.
www.mpqhf.org