HCI3 Releases New Analysis Tools to Support Implementation of Bridges to Excellence and PROMETHEUS Payment

NEWTOWN, Conn., July 12 /PRNewswire/ -- To help health care providers in their efforts to become accountable care organizations (ACOs) and payers in developing value-based payment initiatives, the non-profit Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute™, Inc. (HCI3™) is releasing a series of analytical tools on its new website. The resources are designed to support implementation of HCI3's two leading payment reform strategies – Bridges to Excellence® (BTE) and PROMETHEUS Payment®.

"HCI3's programs are fully operational with a focus on measured outcomes that will support ACOs in their efforts to reduce care defects and take a team approach to patient care," said Francois de Brantes, HCI3's Executive Director. "By realigning payment incentives with an emphasis on results, total cost and quality of care, these new tools and resources will help employers, providers and health plans design and implement programs that will measurably improve health care value through evidence-based incentive programs and payment reform. Our programs are designed to be rapidly deployed 'as is,' or can be customized depending on the needs of a community."

Under the HCI3 umbrella, BTE programs focus on measuring and rewarding the quality of physician practices, and PROMETHEUS Payment on bundled payments. The organization brings together provider performance measurement and payment reform.

Ability to measure complication rates

The new ECR® (Evidence-informed Case Rate) Analysis Tool enables employers, health plans and providers to examine their claims data, calculate savings opportunities, and compare potentially avoidable complication (PAC) rates for multiple chronic conditions against national and regional averages. Developed by HCI3 with support from Discern Consulting, this on-line tool enables organizations that have downloaded HCI3's freeware and analyzed their claims data to examine how efficiently health resources are being used relative to benchmarks, and prioritize quality improvement.

An ECR® is a patient-specific budget for the entire episode of medical care. It includes the prices of all covered services (hospital, physicians, pharmacy, rehabilitation facility, etc.) that would typically treat a patient for a given condition, adjusted for the severity and complexity of the patient's condition. The ECR® Analysis Tool generates an opportunity report highlighting the savings that can be achieved by reducing a population's rate of potentially avoidable complications.

In addition to the ECR Analysis Tool, HCI3's new website provides physicians with a decision-support tool to guide them in selecting a pathway to recognition in any one of the Bridges to Excellence programs. This Recognition pathway tool will also provide physicians with information on various P4P programs that support the BTE Recognitions.

The site will also serve as an educational hub for payment reform and provide technical information to support program implementations.

"We are excited that these tools are now available for employers, health plans and others such as Medicaid programs that pay for health services. HCI3's tools provide evidence-based and severity-adjusted measures permitting health care purchasers to compare how efficiently their health care dollars are spent. This is a critical ingredient of payment reform," said Dennis White, Senior Vice President, Value-Based Purchasing for the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH).

The ECR Analysis tool is used in NBCH's eValue8™ program, the nation's leading standardized Request for Information tool used by employers and coalitions to measure and compare health plan performance. As part of its eValue8 program, NBCH currently asks participating health plans to use the ECR Analysis Tool to report potentially avoidable costs in management of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and is expanding to include all ECRs for the 2011 review process.

Physician finder for consumers

While physicians and practices recognized by Bridges to Excellence can be found on a number of public sites, consumers can now search for these physicians on HCI3's site.

HCI3's activities are supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the New York State Health Foundation, and the Colorado Health Foundation.

Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute™, Inc.

The Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute TM, Inc. (HCI3™) is a not-for-profit multi-stakeholder organization resulting from the merger of Bridges To Excellence, Inc. and PROMETHEUS Payment, Inc. The mission of the organization is to create significant improvements in the quality and affordability of health care by developing and implementing programs that recognize and reward physicians, hospitals and other health care providers that deliver safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered care. Through its PROMETHEUS Payment® model and Bridges to Excellence® Recognitions, HCI3 offers a comprehensive package of solutions to employers, health plans and coalitions to improve the flawed incentives that currently permeate the U.S. health care system. www.HCI3.org

SOURCE Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, Inc. (HCI3)