Managing Transitions to Care for Medicare Patients to Avoid Costly Inpatient Admissions, a November 30, 2006 audio conference, will examine how to predict which Medicare patients are most likely to experience problems that can lead to higher costs of care when care transitioning and what strategies are most effective in managing these transitions.

Click here to listen to some pre-conference comments from our audio conference presenter.

Hospital admissions and re-admissions are not only common among Medicare populations, but are most oftentimes preventable.

During this 90-minute audio conference, Danielle Butin, director, northeast health services for Secure Horizons, United Healthcare and Gregg Lehman, PhD, president and chief executive officer, INSPIRIS, will describe how their organizations are coordinating the care of Medicare patients as they transition through the healthcare system to minimize costly episodes of care.

You will get details on how to:

• Lower re-admission rates by managing the post-hospital transition period;
• Manage the doctor-to-doctor transition;
• Develop effective targeting strategies that can be used to identify those patients who are at greatest risk for experiencing complicated care transitions;
• Create a "medical home" that can aid in managing transitions; and
• Understand and maximize the role of health coaches, patient navigators and case managers in care transitions.

Here's what participants said about the live audio conference:

"This conference provided proactive, progressive concepts in managing transitional care," said Kathi Pickett, Assistant Director, Clinical Integration, Baycare Health Partners.

"The information was extremely useful. The principles involved can be applied to many things we are currently doing," said a care management executive with a Massachusetts-based physician hospital organization.

You can "attend" this program right in your office and enjoy significant savings – no travel time or hassle; no hotel expenses. It’s so convenient! Invite your staff members to participate.

Listen to some pre-conference comments from our expert presenter:

Gregg Lehman, president and CEO of Inspiris, describes how miscommunication during the care transition puts elderly patients at risk for reduced quality of care, poorer outcomes and unnecessary procedures:

WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS AUDIO CONFERENCE?

CEOs, medical directors, disease management directors, managers and coordinators, health plan executives, care management nurses, business development and strategic planning directors.

ABOUT OUR PANELISTS:

Danielle N. Butin, MPH, OTR

Danielle Butin, MPH, OTR, director, northeast health services for Secure Horizons, United Healthcare. Butin has developed a number of innovative health screening, self-management, frail elderly care management and wellness programs. Prior to her current position Butin was the manager of health promotion at Oxford Health Plans.

Butin also serves as a member of the HMO Workgroup on Care Management. For the past 10 years, Butin has served on the faculty of the Occupational Therapy Department at Columbia University. Before joining Oxford, Butin held supervisory positions in geriatric psychiatry, community health and home care. She has published a number of articles in the field of aging in self-management strategies for dementia, depression and de-conditioning. In addition, Butin maintains a private practice where she specializes in the comprehensive assessment and treatment of older adults and their caregivers.

Butin received her Masters in Public Health with a specialization in Geriatrics and Gerontology at Columbia University and her B.S. in Occupational Therapy from New York University.

Gregg Lehman

Gregg O. Lehman, PhD, is president and CEO of INSPIRIS, a healthcare management company focused on improving the quality of life for the elderly population, while reducing the cost to Medicare Advantage health plans. INSPIRIS partners with individual health plans to provide acute, post-acute, custodial and hospice-care programs that address the needs of the plan's membership.

Previously Dr. Lehman had served as president and chief executive officer of Gordian Health Solutions, a Tennessee-based company providing population health management products and services to employers, managed care organizations and healthcare providers throughout the United States. Prior to joining Gordian, Lehman was president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH). Under Dr. Lehman’s leadership, NBCH transitioned from a grant-supported organization to an enterprise with the development of a suite of products and services for national group purchasing.

Dr. Lehman has held senior management positions at other healthcare related organizations and has had a distinguished career in higher education, including serving as president of Taylor University in Indiana.

In addition to serving on a number of national boards of directors, he works with the Health Care Purchasing Institute through Academy Health, the eHealth Initiative, the National Quality Forum, the National Patient Safety Foundation, and various other purchasing/quality organizations that promote value-based purchasing and market-based reform. He is also a frequent writer and speaker on employer healthcare issues.

Lehman received a Bachelor of Science from Indiana University and his Master of Science and a doctoral degree from Purdue University.