Los Angeles - UCLA Medical Group has been identified as one of the top 10 Southern California physician organizations — and one of the top 20 in California — by the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA). The rankings are based on the physician organization's provision of recommended care, patient satisfaction and investment in information technologies that support quality care.

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"These groups, operating in an organized and integrated model, have distinguished themselves and raised the bar for other physician practices in California. By investing in information technologies that improve care and physician decision-making, they are better able to deliver preventive and chronic care services to their patients, who are clearly satisfied with the care they are receiving," said Don Crane, president and CEO of the California Association of Physician Groups.

The best performing medical groups were selected from among 225 participating in the Pay for Performance (P4P) program. Last July, the association released its second complete annual statewide P4P program report covering the performance of more than 35,000 physicians in these California physician organizations.

To earn selection, a physician group had to demonstrate that it met criteria in three categories of performance measurement: clinical, patient experience and the use of information technology. All top performing groups received the maximum rating for qualifying information technology activities: using clinical data to manage patient populations, and using technology to support physician decision-making during patient interactions.

"We have a number of strategies to make sure that our patients get the right preventive and ongoing care," said Dr. Samuel A. Skootsky, medical director of the UCLA Medical Group. "For example, over several years we developed our own web-based system to provide online reports and feedback to the doctors on the kind of care that is being measured by IHA, such as diabetes care or screening young women for chlamydia. Our doctors can see how their performance compares to colleagues and our Group as a whole."

The P4P program examines physician group performance according to 14 measures of clinically recommended preventive care — such as breast cancer and cholesterol screening — and chronic care for conditions such as asthma and diabetes. Patient satisfaction is determined through a mailed survey that asks how well doctors communicate, the timeliness of care and service, access to specialists, and overall ratings of the doctor and care experience.

"Several recent studies, including the Institute of Medicine's Fostering Rapid Advances in Health, have shown that adoption of IT systems for purposes such as building patient registries for at‑risk or chronically ill patients and using electronic decision support systems at the point of care can lead to substantial improvements in the quality of care," said Tom Williams, executive director of the Integrated Healthcare Association. "This has proven to be the case in IHA's P4P program. Medical groups that received full credit on the IT measures had average clinical scores that were nine percentage points higher than medical groups that showed no evidence of IT adoption."

Medical groups evaluated by the association contract with the seven participating P4P health plans: Aetna, Blue Cross of California, Blue Shield of California, CIGNA Healthcare of California, Heath Net (California), PacifiCare (California) and Western Health Advantage. In 2004, these plans — covering 6.2 million health plan enrollees — paid out combined incentive payments of almost $40 million to physician groups that reached P4P quality targets.

Source: dBusinessNews