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Improving Women’s Health
Welcome to the Improving Women’s Health web site of the American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations (AAPPO). Almost 70% of commercially insured people are enrolled in a health plan offering a preferred provider organization (PPO) network. A PPO offers a contracted network of doctors who have agreed to provide care to patients. PPOs provide easy access to quality care provided by the right doctor, providing the right care, at the right time. The objective of this web site is to help PPO leaders understand strategies for working with patients, providers, and payers to improve surgical care for women.
The Improving Women’s Health Initiative is targeted to AAPPO’s member organizations, as well as their customers – employers, patients and physicians. The web site will initially focus on surgical care for women, and will add other chronic disease information over the next few months.
Why surgical care? Two procedures almost unique to women, breast biopsies and hysterectomies, are among the most common procedures performed in the U.S. There are 600,000 hysterectomies each year, and 1.7 million breast biopsies. Yet research shows that a large percentage of these procedures are unnecessarily being performed using older, “open” surgical techniques, even though physicians themselves recommend that they be carried out as “minimally invasive procedures” (MIP) most of the time. Physicians offering minimally invasive procedures use specialized instruments and small surgical openings. Patients typically experience less pain, a shorter or no hospital stay, and a lower chance of infection. In many cases the procedure can be done in an outpatient setting, which can be more convenient and less costly for the patient and a PPO.
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Case studies on use of benefit design to increase adoption
of MIP, for both cost and productivity improvements!
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This web site provides links to research and information from independent experts that will help PPOs improve their network offerings, and will help patients get the information they need to make clinical decisions. Use this web site to learn more about issues important to women’s health.
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Click here to listen to AAPPO’s
webinar series featuring expert speakers
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OCTOBER IS NATIONAL BREAST
CANCER AWARENESS MONTH
Resources
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This project was supported by an educational grant from Ethicon Endo-Surgery.
Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has no independent knowledge concerning the information contained in this article, and findings and conclusions expressed are those reached by the authors.
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