Coos Bay

From their website: 

Help the Department of Human Services and the Oregon Health Authority work toward safe, independent and healthy futures for all Oregonians. Share your ideas and help shape the DHS and OHA budgets for 2011–2013. Take part in conversations about how to protect and empower children, families, seniors and people with disabilities. Get involved with OHA’s work to build a healthier Oregon by lowering health care costs, increasing access and improving quality of care.

For more information, visit www.oregon.gov/dhs or www.oregon.gov/oha

Reasonable accommodations will be provided as needed for individuals requesting assistive hearing devices or large-print materials. Individuals needing these types of accommodations should e-mail us at dhs.oha@state.or.us at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting. A sign language interpreter is scheduled for this event.

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio will hold a town hall at the North Bend City Hall on Thursday, August 13th.

Should you attend, please speak up and ask the congressman a question. Here are some possible talking points from which you might formulate your question:

We support comprehensive health reform that would accomplish the following:

• Every U.S. resident will have access to a clearly defined set of essential health services.
• The Triple Aim will drive the design of the health care system, in that the health system demonstrates:
  • Improvement in the overall health of the defined population,
  • Reduced per-capita costs, and
  • Improvement in the individual patient experience in terms of clinical outcomes, patient safety and patient satisfaction.
• The business models within our health system must realign financial incentives to make them consistent with the Triple Aim. On example would be to look at eliminating fee-for-service billing, and instead pay providers to keep people healthy and out of the hospital.
• Prevention, health education, and wellness services will be provided and promoted.
• Disparities in access to an essential benefits package and subsequently health outcomes between people of different socioeconomic and demographic groups is not acceptable and therefore should be eliminated.
• The delivery system must be transformed to provide greater access to effective primary care and chronic disease management, while specialty care must be more effectively linked and integrated with primary care providers.
• Electronic Health Records should be developed and implemented to promote and support evidence based decisions and improved efficiency of health care delivery.
• We must include development of a competitive, publicly-funded insurance option that gives Americans affordable and fair choice in how their insurance is purchased.
• We must explicitly acknowledge that public resources are finite. Therefore, public funds must be focused on providing the services which will cause the greatest improvement in population health. Many people may be able to purchase services that are more than those that are provided as part of the essential benefit package available to all residents and they should be allowed to do so. This is true of Medicare where close to 80% of Medicare beneficiaries have some type of supplemental coverage on top of their traditional Medicare benefit. However, the core benefit must provide a sufficient floor of essential benefits so that buying additional services is not absolutely necessary in order to achieve consistent positive health outcomes.

Inaugural Membership Conference
Saturday, June 14, 2008

» Register & Pay Now

John Kitzhaber invites you to join him at our 1st Annual Membership Conference. You can see Gov. Kitzhaber's invitation in his blog.

Agenda
9:30 am - Pre-conference workshops (optional, but pre-registration is required)
12:00 pm - Registration and lunch, and bumper sticker contest
1:30 - Plenary Session and Member Convention with John Kitzhaber and the Interim Steering Committee (see grassroots structure document here)
2:45 - Concurrent workshops
4:30 - Looking Forward: Our Next Steps, John Kitzhaber
5:30 - 7:00 pm - Members-only Reception with John Kitzhaber: Appetizers, no-host bar and live music by the Bobby Torres Ensemble - Fun!

» Workshop details (tentative)

Location

Accommodations
Lewis and Clark is making dorm rooms available for those who wish to spend the night Friday and/or Saturday evenings. The lodging must be pre-arranged and costs between $22-$27 per person.

Cost
$30 - Conference sessions, materials and lunch
$35 - The above, plus the Members-only Reception and 1-year membership

A limited number of scholarships are available. You may also inquire about a travel stipend.

For more information or to reserve a room or to arrange to pay onsite, please contact Matt Webber at 503-860-5854 or matt@wecandobetter.org.

To register and pay for the Conference, please use our secure online process. To reserve a place now, but register and pay on-site, or to request a scholarship. Please contact Matt.

Our second Leadership Training will be held the first Saturday in April. Please RSVP using the sign-up link below (preferred, though you must be logged-in to use the sign-up feature) or by sending an email to matt@wecandobetter.org.

This training will focus on three things:

• our new structure and grassroots decision-making
• presenting our message to groups large and small (AKA the speaker's training)
• the upcoming membership meeting

We will also hope to introduce our new staff members.