The first class of fellows under the N.J. Healthcare Executive Leadership Academy (NJHELA) completed their six-month program Friday with a series of presentations sharing new models and recommendations for improving end-of-life care in New Jersey.

NJHELA is a first-of-its-kind initiative in which NJHA, the Medical Society of New Jersey and the N.J. Association of Health Plans worked collaboratively with faculty at Seton Hall University to develop a program in which rising healthcare executives in each organization could cut through silos and work together to address healthcare policy challenges. In this first cohort, the group of 26 fellows focused on improving end-of-life care. That’s an area in which New Jersey ranks among the top states in the nation for high-intensity, high-cost care, without a correlation in higher quality.

The NJHELA participants worked in teams and developed projects focused on specific areas of end-of-life care, providing data, assessing barriers and proposing actions for improvements. Those projects were shared in a poster session and presentations Friday in Long Branch at the culmination of a two-day wrap-up session.

The presentations covered an array of topics, from incentivizing earlier discussions on palliative care to using telehealth to increase access to palliative care.

NJHA, MSNJ and NJAHP hope the collaboration will continue. Plans are underway to have the fellows take part in a leadership conference at NJHA in September, and all parties hope the opportunity to work across the different stakeholder groups will help in other vexing healthcare challenges. Planning is already underway to create a second cohort next year.