ALERTInvitation to Participate in AMGA Press Conference Call on CMS Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration Participating Medical Groups will Discuss Findings for Third Year of Demonstration
DATE: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 TIME: 11:00am EDT / 10:00am CDT / 9:00am MDT / 8:00am PDT
TO PARTICIPATECall In: 1-800-344-6491Pass Code: 3266425Title: AMGA-CMS PGP Demonstration Please call in approximately 5 minutes before the scheduled call to register and receive a place in the queue for questions.
Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Charlene Frizzera, recently announced that all 10 participating physician groups from the Physician Group Practice (PGP) Demonstration achieved benchmark performance on at least 28 of the 32 measures reported in performance year 3 and two groups – Geisinger Clinic, Danville, PA, and Park Nicollet Health Services, St. Louis Park, MN – achieved benchmark performance on all 32 performance measures. The measures focus on diabetes, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and cancer screening. As a result of the improved efficiency, five physician groups will receive performance payments totaling $25.3 million as part of their share of $32.3 million of savings generated for the Medicare Trust Funds in performance year 3. The 5 groups are: Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, Geisinger Clinic, Marshfield Clinic, St. John’s Health System, and the University of Michigan Faculty Group Practice.
Of the 10 participating physician groups, nine are AMGA members: Billings Clinic; The Everett Clinic, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic; Forsyth Medical Group; Geisinger Clinic; Marshfield Clinic; Park Nicollet Health Services; and St. John’s Health System; University of Michigan Faculty Group Practice(Middlesex Health System is the other participant).
“The results from the third year of the demonstration have profound implications for shaping healthcare reform in America and only add to the growing body of evidence in support of coordinated care,” commented AMGA President and Chief Executive Officer Donald W. Fisher, Ph.D., CAE. “AMGA has been a champion of accountable, coordinated care, and these results demonstrate, once again, the efficiencies and quality that can be found in multispecialty medical groups and other organized systems of care.”
“These results show what can happen when we work with the physician community to design and implement measurement and incentive systems to improve care for Medicare patients,” said Frizzera. “Measuring and rewarding quality over volume creates opportunity to standardize processes and redesign workflows to improve the delivery of care. The physician groups have dedicated leadership and resources including health information technology and staff to make this happen.”
Performance year 3 was the first year that all 32 measures were in effect for the demonstration. The measures focus on diabetes, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and cancer screening. The measures are consistent with clinical practice and high quality care and have support from the physician community.
The PGP demonstration provides incentives for better coordination of Medicare Part A and Part B services, promotes the investment in care management programs and redesigned care processes, and rewards physicians for improving health outcomes.
Under the demonstration, physician groups are held accountable for the quality of care and the growth in Medicare expenditures for the patient population they serve. In turn, the physician groups have the flexibility to redesign care to improve quality and reduce Medicare expenditure growth.
Their efforts have included better coordination of care for patients transitioning between care settings, proactively reaching out to patients with chronic illness, and more aggressively monitoring them between physician visits.
Health information technology plays a critical role by providing practitioners in the group with more complete clinical information about the patient that can be used to monitor patients between visits, identify gaps in care, and better coordinate services. “We continue to be encouraged by these results,” said Frizzera, who indicated that “the demonstrations benchmarks for measuring quality and savings are reasonable and achievable as the groups have shown in the first three years of results.”
The following groups are participating in the PGP Demonstration: • Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, Bedford, NH• Deaconess Billings Clinic, Billings, MT• The Everett Clinic, Everett, WA• Forsyth Medical Group, Winston-Salem, NC• Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA• Middlesex Health System, Middletown, CT• Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI• Park Nicollet Health Services, St. Louis Park, MN• St. John’s Health System, Springfield, MO• University of Michigan Faculty Group Practice, Ann Arbor, MI
About the American Medical Group Association The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) advocates for multispecialty medical groups and other organized systems of care and for the patients served by these systems by continuously striving to improve patient care through innovation, information sharing, benchmarking, the creation of sound public policy, and leadership development. AMGA’s vision is to make multispecialty medical groups and other organized systems of care the preferred delivery system for coordinated, patient-centered, efficient, quality medical care in America. Members of AMGA partner with an organization comprised of the best and brightest in health care, the most innovative leaders from the premier integrated systems dedicated to delivering the highest quality care to their patients. The medical group members of AMGA deliver health care to more than 95 million patients in the United States and play active roles in raising the standard of care in their communities and nationwide. AMGA members are on the vanguard of treatment and disease management and offer coordinated care that enhances the quality of life for their patient populations and advances health care and medical science. AMGA is a conduit to information, networking, education, and operational tools and a champion for medical groups in the national arena. For more information, visit www.amga.org.
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