Florida Health Care Coalition

The Florida Health Care Coalition is an Orlando, Florida, nonprofit organization comprised of representatives of Florida employers and medical services providers dedicated to improving health care quality in Central and South Florida. It does this by improving the quality and efficiency of the health care delivery system, controlling expenditures at the community level and working to improve the health of employees at Florida companies.

Health Care a Local Issue

While the coalition is involved in a number of patient safety issues at the national level, the coalition takes the view that health care delivery is predominately a local issue. Delivery systems vary greatly from place to place, as does the quality of those systems. The coalition is heavily involved in designing actionable projects that have a direct impact on the health care of consumers in Central and South Florida.

Demonstration Projects and Initiatives

The coalition has conducted many programs designed to improve the treatment of chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes, has participated in national patient safety initiatives and has designed programs to measure health plan performance improvement for employers.

Leapfrog Hospital Initiative

One of the more important initiatives of the Coalition is participation in The Leapfrog Group's patient safety work. The Coalition's Central Florida area is one of 12 regions selected by the Leapfrog Group to work on the reduction of hospital errors that directly affect patient care. The Institute of Medicine in 1999 estimated that nearly 1 million medication errors occur in hospitals annually at a cost of more than $2 billion dollars.

Open Airways Childhood Asthma Program

The Open Airways Childhood Asthma Program is an interactive educational tool for groups of 8 to 10 children as they learn to manage their asthma. Children are taught how to recognize their own symptoms, how to deal with asthma episodes and how to change behaviors that might trigger an asthma attack.

Consumer Assessment of Physicians Study

The Consumer Assessment of Physicians Study (CAPS) is a patient-satisfaction questionnaire developed by the Harvard Medical School, the RAND Corp. and the Research Triangle Institute. The goal is to measure physicians across Central Florida on the same attributes using one survey instrument. The initiative is funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.