Positive power player

making it happen: Healthcentric Advisors staff in a meeting. From left, Putney Pyles, senior program coordinator; H. John Keimig, president and CEO, Tammy Quattrocchi, contracts coordinator and compliance officer. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
making it happen: Healthcentric Advisors staff in a meeting. From left, Putney Pyles, senior program coordinator; H. John Keimig, president and CEO, Tammy Quattrocchi, contracts coordinator and compliance officer. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Healthcentric Advisors is all about empowerment.

Under the direction of President and CEO H. John Keimig, the nonprofit has strategically worked to improve health care and patient safety by empowering health care providers, patients and its own employees.

“Health care quality cannot be advanced without the empowerment of people,” said Keimig.

Due in no small part to that philosophy – as well as Keimig’s leadership – Healthcentric has experienced tremendous growth and transformation since its founding in 1994.

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The Providence-based nonprofit originally started out as a quality improvement organization contractor for Rhode Island for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Today it administers that contract throughout New England, and also provides quality improvement, education, consulting and other services throughout the country.

As Keimig pointed out, 2014 was a landmark year for Healthcentric; it was awarded a $53.4 million contract by CMS to administer a Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization for New England. The nonprofit was just one of 14 government contractors chosen for the new nationwide QIN-QIO, a collaborative effort with initiatives aimed at improving care and coordination of care, fostering preventative activities and patient and family engagement, promoting IT use and reducing such dangers as medication errors or infections caused as the result of health care.

“This expansion has led to immense growth and additional opportunities over the past two years,” said Keimig.

To accommodate that growth, Healthcentric opened up two satellite offices, in Woburn, Mass., and Brunswick, Maine. In subsequent years, it has also been awarded federal contracts and innovation projects aimed at improving care even further. Other initiatives have included creating and managing job-training programs for electronic health records and for nursing home workers, as well as facilitating the use of standardized tools throughout various facets of medicine.

Meanwhile, another of Keimig’s significant directives was updating the nonprofit’s brand.

Formally known as Quality Partners of Rhode Island, its name was changed to Healthcentric Advisors in 2011 as a means to reflect its expansion, both in its expertise and services and in its coverage area.

“This persistent commitment to the organization’s central mission and its associates is a testament to Mr. Keimig’s accountability, integrity, open communication and overall approach to leadership,” said Kara Butler, Healthcentric’s director of administrative services.

Keimig is just as dedicated to the community. He sits on numerous boards, including the government affairs committee and the finance committee for the American Health Quality Association in Washington, D.C., as well as for the Rhode Island Quality Institute. He also lectures on health care topics at Xavier University and Rhode Island College.

Ultimately, he noted, empowerment is central to the organization’s mission because, simply put, there is no “silver bullet” when it comes to improving health care.

“It cannot be improved merely through mandate, regulation or a mission statement on a glossy annual report,” he said.

He takes a three-pronged approach to that philosophy: Healthcentric employees are empowered to be creative and take calculated risks; health care providers are empowered with data and practices to help make changes in quality of care; and patients are empowered to be active when it comes to their health and health care.

As a means to further emphasize its mission, Healthcentric has adopted the tagline “Advancing Healthcare Quality and Empowering People.” As Keimig noted, the two go hand in hand.

“We don’t provide health care,” he stressed, “We provide education and technical assistance to those who do so that they can deliver health care that is better, safer, more accessible, of higher value and more person-centered.” •

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