ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value Welcomes Rachel Regan

(PRWEB) September 30, 2014

Rachel Regan has joined the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value as the program manager of payment initiatives, a new effort for the Center focused on exploring payment systems that reward health outcomes instead of volume.

Regan will be responsible for facilitating payment experiments like those occurring through the Wisconsin Statewide Value Committee, a multi-stakeholder organization with a mission to rapidly improve the overall value of healthcare in Wisconsin. She plans to utilize lean principles to affect the payment discussion and movement in the state of Wisconsin, which will help drive the payment initiatives to a national level.

"I am very excited to work with a group of leaders who are dedicated to impacting healthcare reform by using lean principles," said Regan. "I also look forward to getting more involved in the healthcare industry in general. Healthcare is a dynamic, energetic industry. It's always changing and I find it really engaging!"

The Center is ready to put that passion to work. "Rachel's lean expertise and energy will help us more fully connect important payment initiatives to our existing delivery and transparency work," said Center President and COO Helen Zak. "We look forward to leading payment experiments in Wisconsin that give rise to new models for the nation."

Regan comes from the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), a top lean education organization, where she held various roles during her ten-year tenure, including director of events and community support, operations director, and education manager. Before LEI, she started her career in lean as a quality engineer with Toyota Motor Manufacturing. As a lean consultant, Regan has supported numerous lean transformation initiatives in a variety of industries. She is a Shingo Prize Examiner and received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

PAYMENT INITIATIVE FOCUS
Since the Center was founded in 2008, it has improved healthcare value and spread change through three essential elements: delivery, transparency and payment.

Thanks to the Center's training and education opportunities and its peer-to-peer learning networks, great work already is being done in delivery and transparency. Now, the Center is putting more resources into the payment component through Regan's leadership. As program director, Regan will be working closely with payment leaders like Karen Timberlake, director of the Wisconsin-based Partnership for Healthcare Payment Reform, to link payment with delivery and transparency. Regan also will work hand-in-hand with the Center's networks in order to connect experiments at individual hospitals.

"There are payment initiatives going on across the country, but not necessarily in a coordinated fashion," said Regan. "We want to bring together disparate experiments at a hospital level and kick it up to an industry-wide level."

This new effort will help advance the Center's mission to change the current healthcare payment system into one that rewards health outcomes.

THEDACARE CENTER FOR HEALTHCARE VALUE
The ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value is an education institute that believes we must have three essential elements for sustainable change in healthcare: Delivery of care designed around the patient; payment and incentives based upon value and outcomes; and transparency of performance (quality and cost) throughout the healthcare system. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, we are a small not for profit with a big mission to help change the healthcare industry. Learn more at: createvalue.org.

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