Vision 2020

Vision 2020 – April 23rd Forum

achavision2020 — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:23:23 +0000

Nearly 50 of the country’s leaders in congenital heart care, cardiac care providers and ACHD patients gathered in Washington, DC on Friday, April 23 to discuss the Phase I recommendations of the Vision 2020 initiative. This half-day event was designed to solicit feedback from key stakeholders in the congenital heart healthcare community, as well as serve as a springboard to begin Phase II. The level of input and collaboration that day was nothing short of amazing and the event was very successful. Those at the helm of Vision 2020 are currently reviewing the comments and reactions, discussing the best ways to move forward. See the report here.

Vision 2020 Phase I Recommendations Document

achavision2020 — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:55:29 +0000

To read the Phase I Recommendations in its entirety in PDF form, please click here . You may leave your feedback and comments about the entire paper on this post.

Vision 2020

achavision2020 — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:59:55 +0000

In December 2008 the Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) established a new initiative, ACHA Vision 2020. ACHA Vision 2020 is an initiative designed to accelerate the development of adult congenital heart care in the United States. The vision for 2020 is that ACHD is an established field that delivers quality lifelong care for adults in the United States. In so doing, the aim is to prevent premature death and disability and prolong health and well-being for congenital heart patients nationwide.

By 2020, the goal is that upon turning eighteen every complex CHD survivor will have access to life-long ACHD care which is:
• High-Quality
• Age-appropriate
• Research- Based
• Coordinated and integrated
• Available in all regions of the country.

We are pleased to present the initial planning recommendations of ACHA’s Vision 2020 initiative meant to help us reach the goal. This paper presents the recommendations from Phase I of the V2020 initiative. These recommendations have been created over the past 12 months through conversations with many of you through your participation in the Forum in April 2009 and with those of you who served on Vision 2020 Workgroups. We thank you for your assistance. The attached paper presents our thinking to date. We believe that it is a fair representation of our collective work.

These recommendations have been accepted by the Vision 2020 Steering Committee. Our plan over the next six months is to solicit feedback on these recommendations and to raise resources to launch Phase II, implementation of the recommendations. The focus of the V2020 Forum in April will be to develop an implementation strategy for each recommendation and to discuss the opportunities and challenges ACHA is likely to encounter moving forward.

We are excited about the opportunities each of the recommendations from the four workgroups provides. We also understand that each of the recommendations requires further supporting material. The development of those supporting documents will be part of Phase II.

We are soliciting your opinions and feedback thru the end of March. Please let us know what you think about where we are as we end Phase I and the direction that each of the recommendations takes us with regard to creating a regional approach to ACHD care, to developing a business model that is financially viable for an institution delivering ACHD care, to developing the workforce required to deliver quality care, and to providing an accreditation framework that will help patients and their families know that a specified set of standards that define quality processes has been met.

If you wish to provide us with feedback, please respond via this blog. The Steering Committee will review all feedback prior to the April Forum. Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Vision 2020 Steering Committee
Gary Webb, MD
William Davidson, MD
Curt Daniels, MD
Welton Gersony, MD
Barry Meil
Disty Pearson
Karen Stout, MD
Roberta Williams, MD
Amy Verstappen
Lori Strumpf

Background

achavision2020 — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:09:55 +0000

The Need
New technologies and medical advances have changed the life expectancy of children born with CHD, enabling the vast majority to survive into adulthood. Over the last 25 years advances in treatment have enabled half a million U.S. children with complex heart defects to survive into adulthood. About 35,000 infants (1 out of every 125) are born with heart defects each year in the United States . Heart defects are among the most common birth defects and are the leading cause of birth defect-related deaths . However, advances in diagnosis and surgical treatment have led to dramatic increases in survival for children with serious heart defects. In the United States today, about 1.4 million children and adults live with congenital heart defects (CHD) . Almost all are able to lead active, productive lives. These facts create new demands on the organization for different approaches to building awareness, conducting research, and setting standards of quality for lifelong continuous care.

The conventional approaches to medical care for adults living with CHD and traditional frameworks for collaboration among pediatric and adult cardiologists and between patients and the medical community are increasingly challenged by a rapidly changing scientific, social, and economic environment, and the rapid entry of new actors, technologies, and institutions. For barriers to patient empowerment to be removed and enablers to be established in their place, a vast web of individuals, medical facilities, leaders in the field and their associations must unite to enact real quality metrics and policy measures which bridge social capital and generate professional competence.

The Working Groups
The first working groups established were predicated on four fundamental principles:

Quality care should be consistent and definable within and across institutions and there should be a mechanism to communicate to the consumer which institutions meet the quality standards.
Care for adults with CHD should be age appropriate, comprehensive and integrated.
The workforce required to meet the needs of adults with CHD should be appropriately trained in the field and to ensure quality their numbers should be adequate to address the growing need.
Centers to treat ACHD should be able to generate revenue in ways that maintain quality care and provide a viable business model for the larger institution.

To be forward thinking around these four principles, four initial working groups were established to develop the recommendations contained in this document. The Working Groups and their charters are:

Program Accreditation. Establish standards and metrics to create a credentialing system for ACHD programs.
Regional Care Planning. Establish care networks that facilitate collaboration and integration of service delivery.
Workforce Planning. Identify strategies to rapidly expand the workforce of trained ACHD care providers.
Business Model Development. Develop successful business models to promote the development of ACHD care within the current reimbursement system.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The recommendations from each working group follow. Each working group has provided recommendations for what ACHA should do to move the field toward the specific vision within each area. The recommendations include specific actions, leverage points, and strategic partnerships that should be undertaken to catalyze change in the specific area with ACHA acting as the catalyst.

Together these recommendations define an approach to ACHD care that is regional utilizing a business model that is sustainable and profitable with the right workforce to deliver quality care and an accreditation system that certifies a quality delivery system.

To view each recommendations, please select the working group under the “pages” section in the upper right of the screen.