One of Wisconsin’s leading advocates for the public disclosure of information on health care quality as a means of improving patient care will examine cost and quality challenges facing doctors and hospitals in the opening address of Lawrence University’s three-part 2005-06 Edward F. Mielke Lecture Series in Biomedical Ethics.
Christopher Queram presents “In Pursuit of Value: The Evolution of Quality-Based Purchasing” Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Queram, who has served as chief executive of the Employer Health Care Alliance Cooperative (The Alliance) in Madison since 1993, recently was named executive director of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality.
The collaborative, which includes hospitals, physician groups, employers and labor unions from around the state, focuses on formulating accepted measures of health care quality for doctors and hospitals.
Both the Menasha-based Affinity regional health care network and the ThedaCare medical delivery network based in Appleton are members of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality.
Queram will examine current issues confronting the health care industry, including cost, quality, system dysfunction and the lack of informed and “value” conscious purchasers and consumers. He also will discuss the importance of employers creating a clear strategy to deal with spiraling health care costs, review challenges to a value-based purchasing health care model and suggest ways to create incentives for improving health care quality.
Active in numerous health care-related organizations, Queram is a member of the State of Wisconsin’s boards on Health Care Information and Private Employer Health Care and is a former chair of the board of the National Business Coalition on Health as well as a former president of the Wisconsin Business Coalition on Health.
He served on President Clinton’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry, is a current member of the Planning Committee for the National Quality Forum and is a clinical instructor for Programs in Health Management at the University of Wisconsin.
As CEO of The Alliance, Queram oversees a non-profit cooperative that serves more than 700 corporations in Dane County and southern Wisconsin, representing more than 110,000 individual health-care subscribers.
A hospital executive in Madison and Milwaukee before joining The Alliance, Queram earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history and a master‘s degree in health management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Queram’s appearance is supported by the Edward F. Mielke Lectureship in Ethics in Medicine, Science and Society. The lectureship was established in 1985 by the Mielke Family Foundation in memory of Dr. Edward Mielke, a leading member of the Appleton medical community and the founder of the Appleton Medical Center.
