Nine North Shore-LIJ Hospitals Earn Pay-for-Performance Awards

North Shore-LIJ earns $814K from US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as part of national pay-for-performance project; highest award to any health system in US

GREAT NECK, N.Y., Dec. 6, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)  awarded nine North Shore-LIJ Health System hospitals more than $814,000, the highest monetary award for any health system participating in a national pay-for-performance (P4P) Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration™ (HQID) project. Conducted by CMS and the Premier healthcare alliance, HQID is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality of inpatient care.

Of the nine hospitals in the North Shore-LIJ Health System receiving awards, North Shore University Hospital (NSUH) in Manhasset, NY earned awards totaling nearly $163,000 – the eighth highest total of 225 participating hospitals nationwide.  In New York State, North Shore-LIJ Health System hospitals earned the top four monetary awards from the demonstration project.  NSUH ranked number one and was followed by Staten Island University Hospital ($144,643), LIJ Medical Center ($128,516) and Huntington Hospital ($122,318).

Through the HQID project, Premier collects a set of more than 30 evidence-based clinical quality measures from the 225 hospitals across the country. The model includes financial incentives for 20 percent of hospitals in each of six clinical areas: acute myocardial infarction (AMI); coronary artery bypass graft (CABG); heart failure (HF); pneumonia (PN); hip and knee replacement (HK) and the surgical care improvement project (SCIP).

NSUH received the highest overall payment in the area of heart failure, and the second-highest overall payments for AMI/heart attack and CABG surgery. Staten Island University Hospital was one of 25 hospitals nationally to win 10 or more awards – SIUH was eligible for 12. Southside Hospital in Bay Shore was one of seven hospitals nationally to receive nine out of 10 possible awards.

"As one of the largest healthcare providers in the New York metropolitan area, North Shore-LIJ Health System is proud that every one of our nine hospitals participating in this pay-for-performance project won an award in at least four clinical areas," said Michael J. Dowling, the health system's president and chief executive officer.

For hospitals participating in the HQID project, the average Composite Quality Score (CQS), an aggregate of all process and outcomes measures within each clinical area, improved by 18.3 percent over the project's first five years. Examples of the measures include the proper administering of aspirin, beta blockers and antibiotics; and readmission and mortality rates.

Additional research by Premier using the Hospital Compare dataset showed that by September 2008, HQID participants scored on average 6.4 percentage points higher (95.05 percent to 88.64 percent) than non-participants when evaluating 19 common Hospital Compare measures. The hospital quality of care information gathered through the initiative is available to consumers on the Hospital Compare website at http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

"There's an emerging model of care in which patient outcomes will be tied to reimbursement," said Kenneth J. Abrams, MD, North Shore-LIJ's senior vice president of clinical operations and chief quality officer. "As healthcare providers, our goal is to make sure that patient care continues to improve. The HQID project is a step toward a national improvement." For complete information about the HQID project, visit www.qualitydemo.com.

The following North Shore-LIJ hospitals participating in the national demonstration project also received pay-for-performance awards: Southside Hospital ($83,381), Plainview Hospital ($66,475), Glen Cove Hospital ($62,595), Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream ($31,664) and Forest Hills Hospital $11,514).

About North Shore-LIJ Health System

The nation's second-largest, non-profit, secular healthcare system, the North Shore-LIJ Health System cares for people of all ages throughout New York City and Long Island – a service area encompassing more than seven million people. The winner of the National Quality Forum's 2010 National Quality Healthcare Award, the North Shore-LIJ Health System consists of 15 hospitals, including a children's medical center and psychiatric facility, 17 long-term care facilities, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, three trauma centers, five home health agencies, a hospice network and dozens of outpatient centers. In addition, the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine has been approved and will admit its first class in August 2011. North Shore-LIJ's owned facilities house about 5,600 beds, employ more than 10,000 nurses and have affiliations with more than 9,000 physicians. Its workforce of about 42,000 is the largest on Long Island and the ninth largest in New York City.  For more information, go to www.northshorelij.com.

SOURCE North Shore-LIJ Health System