| Two California Groups Will Make Physician Performance Results Public
For the first time Californians will have access to
information identifying physicians who scored highly on evidence-based
performance measures under a new program announced by Blue Shield of
California and the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH).
The healthcare quality transparency initiative, which
has widespread support from organizations ranging from AARP to CalPERS
to Service Employee International Union (SEIU), will allow the public
to identify thousands of high-performing doctors online and to make
more informed healthcaredecisions.
PBGH, a business coalition of 50 purchasers, a nonprofit
health plan Blue Shield of California and California Cooperative
Healthcare Reporting Initiative, a collaborative of healthcare
purchasers, consumers, health plans and physicians, worked together.
They measured the performance of 13,000 high-volume
physicians on evidence-based healthcare quality standards. The Blue
Ribbon Recognition Program will publicly recognize physicians who
scored above average in up to eight measures in preventive screening,
diabetes and other categories.
These physicians will have a blue ribbon icon added to their Blue Shield online profile at: www.blueshieldca.com/findaprovider. The program is based solely on data compiled to measure quality of care and does not consider cost information in any way.
The performance results are drawn from data collected by
the California Physician Performance Initiative, a multi-stakeholder
initiative run by physician organizations, health plans, purchasers,
consumers and health data experts, to measure and report on the
performance of California’s physicians. The four-year-old
organization aggregates claims data covering more than 5 million
patients and 63,000 physicians to generate a reliable set of quality
metrics.
All physicians were given an opportunity to review their
own patient records and correct any deficiencies they believed to exist
in the data.
"At PBGH we know that the doctor-patient relationship is
at the core of our healthcare system," said David Lansky, president and
CEO of PBGH.
The following organizations commented about their
support for the program: AARP, The California Public Employees’
Retirement System. SEIU, the California Health Care Coalition, the
California School Employees Association and Southern California Edison.
Michael-Anne Browne, Blue Shield of California’s
medical director for quality, said, "Californians currently have access
to quality information on health plans, hospitals and even medical
groups, but have virtually no quality information on their individual
physician. That changes today ..."
George McGregor, fund administrator for the California
Schools Voluntary Employees Benefits Association talked about consumer
engagement. "It is imperative that we re-engage the consumer in making
critical health care decisions."
Maurice Hodos, fund administrator for the United Food
and Commercial Workers National Health and Welfare Fund, echoed the
sentiments of other organizations when he said his organization
"strongly supports efforts to promote quality transparency in health
care and the opportunity of our members to make health care decisions
based on easily available informed quality information."
Addresses: Blue Shield of California, 50 Beale Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-1808; (415) 229-5000, www.blueshieldca.com. Pacific Business Group on Health, 221 Main Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 281-8660, www.pbgh.org.
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