Community Oral Health Initiative: Driving value-based transformation in North Carolina.

CareQuest Institute for Oral Health's mission is to improve the oral health of all. One way to achieve this is through programmatic initiatives, which train dental clinics to provide equitable, integrated and accessible care for their communities. The Community Oral Health Transformation (COrHT) Initiative, allowed CareQuest Institute to collaborate with the North Carolina Oral Health Collaboration (NCOHC) and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of North Carolina Foundation to implement and support the initiative in North Carolina.

A peer review of a peer review organization.

Under Medicare, one of the federally required objectives of peer review organizations is to reduce inappropriate and unnecessary admissions. We reevaluated 32 admissions approved and 32 denied by the Arizona peer review organization, Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), in a "blind" manner to determine whether practicing physicians in the community agree with the local peer review organization. Overall, physicians at the Scottsdale Memorial Hospital (SMH) approved 72% of HSAG-approved and denied 61% of HSAG-denied admissions.