Oregon panel updating state’s health action plan

The Oregon Health Policy Board is updating its 2010 comprehensive health reform plan with a new roadmap that moves beyond the implementation phase of health reform and toward an “upstream” approach that promotes health, emphasizes prevention and advances health system transformation, officials said Tuesday.

OHPB’s Action Plan for Health: 2017-2019 Refresh is a major reboot of its seven-year-old plan. It creates a framework that focuses on root causes of poor health outcomes, social determinants of health, health equity and use of evidence-based approaches.

The 2010 plan was the state’s first strategic plan for comprehensive health reform. It helped spur the creation of Oregon’s coordinated care organizations and establish patient-centered primary care home standards.

“We want to achieve a robust, sustainable, equitable health system that serves all Oregonians,” said Zeke Smith, chair of the Oregon Health Policy Board. “The 2010 Action Plan for Health got Oregon’s health reforms off the launch pad. The 2017 plan aims us higher.”

The 2017 Action Plan Refresh is framed around a set of guiding principles that serve as a long-term guide for the board, OHA, and other stakeholders and partners across the state in setting priorities, policy-making and decision-making. They include:

— Ensuring access for all Oregonians to the right health care, at the right time and in the right place.
— Improving health outcomes and reducing costs through transparency, efficiency, innovation, accountability and financial sustainability.
— Using a patient-centered, integrated and coordinated care approach that optimizes use of technology.
— Achieving health equity and ensuring that the health care system and its workforce reflect local community characteristics and needs.
— Engaging providers, purchasers, consumers and other stakeholders in aligning around a common framework.
— Emphasizing prevention and promoting health development and behaviors where people live, work, learn and play.

The 2017 Action Plan also works in tandem with the seven public health priority areas in the State Health Improvement Plan to align the work across OHA: prevent and reduce tobacco use; slow the increase of obesity; improve oral health; reduce harms associated with alcohol and substance use (including opioids); prevent deaths from suicide; improve immunization rates; and protect the population from communicable diseases.

“Oregon has a nationally recognized health system that works for patients and taxpayers,” said OHA Director Patrick Allen. “The Oregon Health Policy Board has set the course. We’re committed to achieving the board’s vision for a more equitable health system that takes down the barriers to better health in Oregon.”

The 2017 Action Plan for Health Refresh is available on the Oregon Health Policy Board’s web page at http://www.oregon.gov/oha/OHPB/Pages/index.aspx.