Topic

Key Points Raised

Decision/Action

State Health Reform Act and opportunities

Decisions about State Health Improvement Program (SHIP) are yet to be made.  Executive Committee meeting at MDH.  RFP will come out later in the year and grantees will be expected to begin work in July 2009. Tobacco prevention is one of the key areas.

Commissioner charged with determining an Essential Benefits Set.  Report due October 2009.  This is a great opportunity once we determine how to provide input re cessation benefits. 

Quality Measurement RFP is out.  Vendor will need to hold public meetings before 12/15/08.  ClearWay Minnesota^SM is keeping an eye on when these will be so that the group can take advantage of the opportunity to provide input on smoking cessation measurements.

More info on these can be found at: www.health.state.mn.us/healthreform

Jane and Jan to continue to keep the group updated on state health care reform initiative

Employer Group Survey

Jeanne walked through findings from survey (on handout). Bottom line is that findings are limited by small number of respondents, low response rate, etc. There was a national survey which has asked many of the same types of questions.  We might be able to tell local stories without local data.

To do another survey would take a lot of resources.  What can we learn from the national survey? Is MN all that different?

Ann to meet with Pfizer representative the week of September 15 and will try to learn more about the NBGH survey.

There might be a good story to tell re DOER and state employees’ benefit in 2008

Could divide state into regions, use informal channels to reach businesses regarding the importance of providing a tobacco cessation benefit package to employees.

Group will not pursue doing another survey at this time

Ann W will look at the NBGH survey and see what can be gleaned from that.

Jeanne will help develop talking points re the results, however limited, of our survey as well as the NBGH survey

Work Group Involvement

Given decision above, no need for Survey workgroup or Survey Analysis work groups.

The focus of the overall committee will be two-fold: 1) Develop tobacco cessation benefits “gold standard” criteria (optimal benefit); 2)Publicly recognize employer groups who provide a best practice tobacco cessation benefits package. An alternative take is to also include and recognize health plans.  It would be interesting to find out what proportion of smokers actually engage in treatment.  Privacy issues may preclude obtaining this info. Why not encourage health plans to make these benefits available to all purchasers at no added expense? Could it be justified financially? What would be optimal benefit look like?

Workgroups:

Optimal benefits and employer recognition workgroup(Darla, Ann W, Anne J., Jeanne and ??). Work on drafting optimal standards and employer group recognition recommendations

Outreach Workgroup

Once optimal benefit is defined, connect with employer groups regarding importance of comprehensive tobacco cessation benefit package.

Communications Workgroup

Develop a communication strategy once project is more well defined (Jeanne, Matt, possible ClearWay and BlueCross consultation, others??)

Bernadette interested in working on outreach at the appropriate time

Next steps

Let Ann W or Darla know if you are interested in working on one of the tasks above by Monday, September 22

Ann W and Darla will draft a project plan document to share with the committee

Next meeting

In 2 months, time and place TBD