More than 13 million Californians live with one or more chronic conditions, yet just half of them receive the care they need. More than ever, health care providers working with these patients need to put better ideas into practice to improve the effectiveness of care. The California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) and the California Improvement Network (CIN) sponsored conferences in San Francisco in November of 2005 and 2008 designed for networking and sharing breakthroughs — large and small — in providing chronic disease care.

The conferences were designed for those who have a stake in practicing better care: clinical staff, administrators, quality improvement staff, health IT staff, payers, and purchasers.

Themes from the 2005 conference included teams and collaborations, motivating and supporting self-management, how to make change at the practice level, and using clinical IT for improvement. The download files include a conference highlights report, as well as an exhibit guide and report on chronic disease management systems.

Themes covered at the 2008 conference included organizational approaches to quality, practice level changes and tactics, bringing better care to populations of patients, and the use of Health 2.0 for patients to more directly participate in their care. Also at this conference, experts from across the nation led salons to discuss patient-centered care, innovative financing of depression care, partnerships with patients and families, and other topics.

The conference agendas and speaker materials from both conferences are available under Document Downloads.