Oregon’s Dilemma: How To Measure Health?  Apr 26, 2013  There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to track the health of a
population: the average blood pressure of a large group of
people, the rate of mental illness, the average weight.
Epidemiologists have been collecting this kind of data for
years, but now, in Oregon, there is cold, hard cash riding on
these metrics.  In a special experiment that is part of the
health law, the Obama Administration gave Oregon almost $2
billion to come up with its own system to coordinate care
better. The idea is to get doctors, nurses, hospitals and other
caregivers to work together – and get paid well -- to keep
people healthy and to get rid of wasteful, unnecessary care.
Sarah Bartelmann of the Oregon Health Authority’s Metrics and
Scoring Committee says it was hard to boil down the list. There
was "a lot of discussion and the conflict was where the data
would come from and if it was something the state could easily
report on," she says.  Oregon decided on 33 meas