LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) announced the winners of its annual Excellence in Healthcare Award. In keeping with the national imperative to reduce the cost of the healthcare system while delivering high quality care to consumers, this award recognizes physician organizations in California that have succeeded in managing costs while ensuring their patients receive high quality, evidence-based care. This marks the second year of the Excellence in Healthcare Award which has been a deliberate step toward value recognition following eleven years of IHA's successful pay for performance awards based on quality and patient experience.
"Paying for value went from carefully considered concept to reality with the implementation of Value Based Pay for Performance (P4P) in 2014," said Jeffrey Rideout, MD, IHA president and CEO. "IHA's Excellence in Healthcare Award recognizes physician organizations that deliver high-value healthcare: strong quality results while effectively managing costs. As CMS and other national entities start to define a framework for Alternate Payment Models (APM), the IHA Value Based P4P program is already recognized as one of the most advanced models in the nation."
To earn this recognition, physician organizations must have performance that ranks in the top 50% of organizations for each of three domains: clinical quality, patient experience, and total cost of care. Out of over 200 physician organizations, 22 achieved this honor for 2015, based on the IHA statewide Value Based P4P program results for measurement year 2014.
Recipients of the Excellence in Healthcare Award are:
- Edinger Medical Group
- Facey Medical Group
- Hill Physicians Medical Group - Bay Region
- Kaiser Permanente – The Permanente Medical Group - South San Francisco Medical Center
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Kaiser Permanente – Southern California Permanente Medical Group:
- Antelope Valley
- Baldwin Park
- Downey
- Fontana/Ontario
- Kern County
- Orange County
- Panorama City
- Riverside
- San Diego
- South Bay
- West Los Angeles
- Woodland Hills
- Meritage Medical Network
- PIH Health Physicians - Group Division
- PIH Health Physicians - IPA Division
- San Jose Medical Group
- Sharp Community Medical Group IPA
- St. Jude Heritage Medical Group
The Value Based P4P program is a successful statewide collaboration that encompasses uniform performance measures, aggregated data collection and validation, a trusted governance process, and a single public report card for physician organizations in California. Since 2004, health plans have paid out over $500 million in P4P incentive payments to physician organizations for outstanding quality and service. Over the life of the program, steady performance improvements have been achieved in the quality of healthcare delivered by P4P participants, and recent analysis completed by IHA shows clear quality benefits for products supported by integrated delivery systems. As affordability emerged as the key priority for the industry, the IHA program adapted to include standard assessments of resource use and total cost of care at the physician organization level.
Most Improved – "Ronald P. Bangasser, MD, Memorial Award for Quality Improvement"
IHA also honored the physician organizations that demonstrated the highest relative quality improvement from 2013 to 2014 from each of eight California regions. Recipients of the Ronald P. Bangasser, MD, Memorial Award for Quality Improvement for each region are:
- Bay Area Region: Chinese Community Health Care Association
- Central Coast Region: Physicians Choice Medical Group of San Luis Obispo
- Central Valley Region: Kaiser Permanente – The Permanente Medical Group - Modesto/Manteca/Stockton Medical Centers
- Inland Empire Region: Premier Healthcare
- Los Angeles Region: Cedars-Sinai Health Associates
- Orange County Region: Mission Heritage Medical Group
- Sacramento/Northern California Region: Hill Physicians Medical Group - Solano Region
- San Diego Region: Mid County Physicians Medical Group
Extending Value Based Performance to Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced yesterday an $18.4 million grant awarded to Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) and California Quality Collaborative (CQC) – working in tandem with IHA, the Center for Care Innovations, and 16 public and private physician organizations – as part of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative. This collaborative, introduced by PBGH and CQC in a press release, will provide technical assistance to help equip 4,800 clinicians with tools, information, and network support needed to improve quality of care and increase patients' access to information for three million Californians, and to spend health care dollars more wisely.
"IHA is pleased to be one of the collaborators in this important initiative," said Dolores Yanagihara, MPH, vice president of performance measurement. "We look forward to enhancing our existing web reporting platform to provide physician level data on resource use and quality for improving patient care."
About the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA)
IHA is a nonprofit statewide leadership group that promotes quality improvement, accountability, and affordability of healthcare in California. The IHA Value Based P4P program is one of the largest non-government physician incentive programs in the U.S. and includes ten health plans and over 200 physician organizations representing approximately 35,000 physicians providing care for 9 million members. For more information, please visit: www.IHA.org.