performance program

Apparently happy with its existing results, Aetna has set plans to include more providers in its pay-for-performance program, expanding it out to family practice and internal medicine physicians based in Washington state. It already offers the program in Cincinnati, Atlanta, Louisville, Ky., Maryland, Washington, DC and northern Virginia. Aetna's P4P program bases its standards on guidelines from the NCQA, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association and American Stroke …

CMS has released the 74 performance measures it plans to begin using in its Medicare pay-for-performance program this July. Under the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, physicians who choose to report on quality measures can get bonuses of up to 1.5 percent of their earnings. The bonuses will apply to services provided between July 1st and December 31st of this year. The measures are drawn from discussions with varied physician trade groups and professional organizations such as the …

A group of top officials with the British National Health Service are visiting Cleveland Regional Medical Center to learn more about the hospital's pay-for-performance program. The British officials are hoping to pick up tips on how to better run its existing pay-for-performance program, which has been so successful that physician bonuses busted the program's budget during the first year. Cleveland Regional was a top performer in the first phase of the …

While they agree that pay for performance approaches can improve care, about three-quarters of primary care physicians worry that public data reporting would have a negative impact on patient relationships, according to a new study published this month in Health Affairs. The research, which involved a survey of 550 randomly chosen general internists, concluded that physicians weren't satisfied that P4P schemes would measure the right factors in the right way. While most PCPs felt …

CMS has extended its pay-for-performance program for three more years, pleased with the results of the program's first two years of results. By CMS's measures, participating hospitals improved overall quality by 11.8 percent during the second year. In response, CMS paid out $8.7 million to the 115 hospitals that performed the best. The next three years of the program, the Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration, will test two new P4P models, one for hospitals that meet a given …

More than half of commercial HMOs in the U.S. have now implemented some form of pay for performance program, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, which surveyed 242 commercial HMOs, concluded that 52.1 percent of the plans were using some type of pay for performance scheme. These plans collectively manage for 81.3 percent of all U.S. commercial HMO enrollees, …

Independence Blue Cross (IBC), the Blue plan serving southeastern Pennsylvania, has kicked off a program designed to make it easier for its network physicians to maintain a key board certification. Working with the American Board of Internal Medicine, IBC is supplying neatly-packaged data that supports the ABIM's practice improvement requirement. The program will assist the 906 internists currently participating in IBC's network. To provide the information for ABIM, IBC is relying on the …

The Integrated Healthcare Association, a California-based group including health plans, medical groups and health systems, has released a list of the top-performing medical groups among the 228 medical practices participating in its pay-for-performance program. The IHA named 46 groups, or 20 percent, as meeting top standards for quality, patient satisfaction and appropriate use of information technology. The ratings come from an analysis of 2005 measurement year, and included data from …

On Friday FierceHealthcare ran a report about a pilot pay for performance program conducted by CMS. The program suggests that the use of evidence-based care is effective for many common conditions, increasing the odds that the federal government will push forward with P4P rules that rival private sector efforts. Russell King, president and executive director of the Wisconsin Homecare Organization, had some interesting …

A pilot pay for performance program conducted by CMS and Premier suggests that the use of evidence-based care is effective for many common conditions, further boosting the odds that the federal government will push forward with P4P rules that rival private sector efforts. In 2004, caregivers at 250 hospitals used 33 evidence-based clinical quality measures to treat common illnesses. The study found that the measures cut costs and improved outcomes for conditions such as heart attack, …