Spartanburg Regional Healthcare Center Equips Its Physician Advisor Group with Evidence-based Guidelines

SEATTLE, April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Spartanburg Regional Healthcare Center recently adopted evidence-based guidelines from MCG (formerly Milliman Care Guidelines) to support second-level case reviews of admissions decisions by its internal physician advisor group as well as the documentation of medical necessity.

Spartanburg Regional had previously paid a third-party physician advisor service to manage its second-level case reviews. After joining the hospital system in 2010, E.G. "Nick" Ulmer, Jr., MD, VP of Clinical Services and Medical Director of Case Management, assembled an internal team of physician advisors and brought the work in-house, reducing the cost of physician advisor services by more than half.

Spartanburg Regional's physician advisor group and case managers now use care guidelines from MCG, delivered through an integration of Midas+™ and CareWebQI^®, to support the review of difficult level of care decisions.

"MCG is so much more than just a criteria set," says Dr. Ulmer. "It has given our internal physician advisor group clarity around level of care decisions, and we now have the evidence to back up those decisions."

Angie Roberson, Director of Case Management at Spartanburg Regional, maintains that the choice to equip their physician advisors with the best available evidence was an easy one. "For me, it's about finding the product you need to do the job," says Roberson. "MCG enables physicians to dig into the evidence supporting the care guidelines. It was a no-brainer that we needed this body of knowledge."

MCG leadership applauds the success of Spartanburg Regional's physician advisor group and agree that the care guidelines are a good match. "We specifically designed the guidelines for use by clinicians to support clinical decision-making not only with medical necessity criteria, but with the underlying evidence," says Jon Shreve, President of MCG. "One of our important goals as a business is to promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement in hospitals. No other product on the market does that."

About Spartanburg Regional Healthcare Center
Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System is an integrated healthcare delivery system in Spartanburg, South Carolina that provides the highest quality of care to patients in Spartanburg, Cherokee, and Union counties in South Carolina, as well as in Polk and Rutherford counties in North Carolina.

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System includes the Medical Group of the Carolinas, a network of more than multispecialty physician offices located throughout the region; Regional HealthPlus, a Physician Hospital Organization representing physicians of every specialty; Spartanburg Regional Foundation; Spartanburg Hospital for Restorative Care; Gibbs Cancer Center & Research Institute; and Pelham Medical Center, located in Greer.

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System provides programs in home health, imaging services, pediatrics, occupational health, sports medicine and rehabilitation. It offers outpatient surgery through the Ambulatory Surgery Center of Spartanburg and the Surgery Center at Pelham. The Emergency Center, Heart Center and Center for Women are recognized as Centers of Excellence.

About MCG
MCG, formerly Milliman Care Guidelines and now part of the Hearst Health network, independently develops and produces evidence-based clinical guidelines and software used by more than 2,200 clients, including 1,200 hospitals and 8 of the 10 largest U.S. health plans. Updated annually by an experienced team of clinicians, the care guidelines support the care management of a majority of Americans. For more information, visit www.careguidelines.com (http://www.careguidelines.com).

The Hearst Health network also includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, and Homecare Homebase. The mission of the Hearst Health network is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person's health journey. To learn more about the Hearst Health network, please read the Hearst press release.

Media Contact
Nancy Narraway
MCG
Tel +1 206 389 5405
[email protected]

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SOURCE MCG