Dr. Jennifer Lundblad

Because we want to leverage and build on what's already in place in a local community and recognize the importance of that context, given the nature of our

work and business model we'll get funding that helps us support something for a few years but our funding always ends that's the nature of getting a grant or contract and our goal is to leave that community in a better position with better capacity to do what they're doing and doing well after our engagement and so we're not trying typically to create new infrastructures new systems new approaches we're trying to build capacity and what's already there so we listen and learn

Whatever that unit is, if it's a single community or a region or a state, who are the associations?

Who are the networks?

Who are the trusted partners that are there?

And how can we work with and through them to carry out whatever work we're doing?

And again, this notion of co-design has become so important in our work so that they're co-designing in ways that are meaningful and actionable and sustainable in however they're defining community.

Yeah, there are many organizations like Stratus Health around the country.

And the program you're referring to, Stan, is

a longstanding Medicare quality improvement program still exists today.

It's called the Quality Innovation Network, Quality Improvement Organization.

And while it's regional and not state-based, every state still has a designated Medicare Quality Improvement Organization.

So we've proudly served in that role for Minnesota since the inception of the program and going back to all its prior program names.

It's in the program cycle that just ended last fall.

Minnesota was part of a three-state region.

That was Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

And as we look ahead, it will be a new six-state region that will be adding Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana to it.

So every state still has that designated Medicare Quality Improvement Organization.

Now they're operated more as regional consortia.

so that there's benefit of learning what's going on in other states while still having that state-level focus.