Regional Roll-Out (RRO) Leader/Lead Organization Information

Name: Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health                                                          Link:www.dfwbgh.org                                                                                                          Description: The Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health is a 120-member coalition of Dallas and Fort Worth area employers committed to market-based health care reform. Programs and activities include: education programs on health benefits topics of key interest to employers; quality improvement initiatives providing comparative measures of quality, outcomes and care processes; relationship building initiatives; and legislative updates and analyses. Members include American Airlines, Bell Helicopter-Textron, EDS, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, RadioShack, Southwest Airlines, Texas Instruments, TXU, Verizon, and others. DFWBGH’s goals are to empower employers to make informed, value-based health care purchasing decisions and to encourage health care providers to continuously improve their performance.

Contact: Marianne Fazen, Ph.D. 
Title: Executive Director
Address: 11520 N. Central Expy., Suite 201, Dallas, TX 75243
Phone: 214-382-3036
Fax: 214-382-3038
Email: fazen@dfwbgh.org 

Why did your organization decide to apply to become a Leapfrog Regional Roll-Out leader?

We became concerned about the high rate of preventable medical errors in hospitals reported by the IOM and decided to ask DFW hospitals what they are doing to improve patient safety.  Soon afterwards, we learned about the Leapfrog Group’s patient safety initiative and decided to apply to lead a regional roll-out in the DFW area.

In your view, what kind of impact Leapfrog has had on your market thus far?

As a direct result of our RRO efforts, DFW hospitals are paying much greater attention to improving patient safety.  Before DFWBGH became involved in the Leapfrog RRO, CPOE was not even on the radar screen of DFW hospitals nor had any  DFW hospital implemented CPOE.  However, now most of the large hospitals have changed their changed their priorities and several are now working toward implementing CPOE in the very near future.  

Regional Roll-Out Market Information

Geographic coverage: Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, and Collin counties

Population: DFW MSA- approximately 5 million

Employer characteristics:

Number of employer/coalition lives in RRO area: approximately 800,000 covered lives

List of employers: http://www.dfwbgh.org/members.htm

Hospital characteristics:

The DFW RRO has 64 targeted hospitals, of which 2 are classified as rural.  DFW has 2 large non-profit systems: Baylor Health Care System with 10 hospital affiliates and Texas Hospital Resources with 13 hospital affiliates.  Methodist is a small non-profit system with 2 hospitals.

DFW has 2 major for-profit hospital systems: HCA with 8 hospital affiliates, and Tenet with 5 hospital affiliates.

Largest insurers: Aetna, BCBS of Texas, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare