The Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative was created by local physicians in 2018 to bring together individuals from several sectors of healthcare to address system level issues with significant impact on the health of our physician and patient communities. Our mission is to make life better for physicians and other clinicians and thereby, make life better for our extended community. Dr. Ed McEachern and Dr. Deb Roman co-chair the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative.
We have cultivated a strong network of healthcare professionals who openly share ideas, insights and experiences with each other and are committed to doing this work together. Our “roundtable” is now viewed as a place where people with different perspectives and experiences are welcomed to come together to actively and effectively address complex healthcare issues.
Participants include representatives from our five major insurance payers, the Department of Insurance, two major hospital systems, the Ada County Medical Society, the Idaho Medical Association, the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, the Idaho Retailers Association, the Idaho State Pharmacy Association, the Idaho Health Data Exchange, as well as independent physicians, pharmacists and industry consultants.
We gather every one to two months to invite diverse perspectives, identify common ground and create and collaborate on innovative healthcare initiatives. For our first project, we chose prior authorization, a process that markedly increases administrative demands on physicians in clinical practice and compromises patient care. Our goal is to bring prior authorization capabilities and medication costs and alternatives to physicians at time of service via EHR. We have made significant progress. We have reduced prior authorizations by over 50% in some instances, coordinated prior authorization grids and started to build the infrastructure needed to accomplish our goals.
In 2023, in response to the changes in the reproductive laws in our state, we expanded our focus to include women’s health. We are collecting and organizing data to detail the impact of current laws on health outcomes, access to medical care, the physician workforce, medical costs and other factors that affect the health of our community. Our data team includes local family and OB/GYN physicians, data scientists, heath services researchers, an MD statistician, and members of the local chapters of the AAFP, ACOG, and ACEP.
Data sources include commercially available Idaho physician rosters based upon NPIs, professional licensing databases from Idaho Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses and the Idaho Department of Insurance, credentialing databases from two Idaho insurance companies, the Idaho Medical Association, and local and national chapters of ACOG and AAFP.
As we build an accurate and comprehensive data base and identify important trends, we will openly share the results with our community so we can work together to support and enhance the health of our physicians and patients. Please read the first report here.
If you would like to participate, please reach out to us at idpwbac@gmail. com. We would love to hear from you.
