Sutter Health Network Physician Organizations Honored for Health Care Quality

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Physician organizations connected to Sutter Health received awards as statewide leaders in clinical quality by the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), a renowned industry leadership group in California.

Out of nearly 200 physician organizations, the 47 top performers achieved the highest overall quality in 2011 based on the IHA statewide Pay for Performance (P4P) program measures.  In addition to celebrating the top performers, IHA honored the physician organizations that demonstrated the most quality improvement from 2010 to 2011.  IHA awards honored five Sutter-affiliated and/or aligned physician organizations:

Sacramento/Central Valley Region

• Most Improved – Central Valley Medical Group, serving San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties
• Top Performer – Sutter Gould Medical Foundation, serving San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties
• Top Performer – Sutter Medical Group, serving Sacramento, El Dorado, Solano, Yuba, Placer and Nevada counties, affiliated with the Sutter Medical Foundation

San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area

• Top Performer – Palo Alto Medical Foundation, serving Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Alameda counties
• Top Performer – Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, serving Alameda and Contra Costa counties

"Every patient deserves high-value medical care—a combination of excellent clinical quality, exceptional service and lower overall costs," said Jeff Burnich, M.D. senior vice president and executive officer for the Sutter Medical Network. "IHA's awards recognize the many steps we've taken over the past several years to enable the highest levels of quality, access and affordability for our patients."

Partners in Prevention

Through early health screenings, personalized health reminders and more, members of the Sutter Medical Network, improve clinical quality performance and empower patients to partner with their care teams.

My Health Online

• In 2011, more than 600,000 patients were connected to their care teams and medical records through My Health Online, Sutter Health's secure, online portal for patients. My Health Online encourages patients to proactively complete necessary health screenings to help prevent, identify and treat conditions in early stages – improving quality outcomes, reducing unnecessary costs and saving lives.

Health Maintenance Guidelines

• The Sutter Medical Network also provides annually updated health maintenance guidelines to complement doctors' conversations with patients. The health maintenance guidelines are available online and in doctor's offices, helping patients stay up-to-date on screenings, immunizations and more.

Reaching Out and Saving Lives

Proactive outreach also helps encourage patients to receive timely health screenings, which helps detect and even prevent illness. Recent (2011) data from the National Committee for Quality Assurance shows that timely preventive health screenings also cost far less than treatment of advanced conditions and disease.

• In three Sutter Medical Network physician organizations, more than 2,000 patients were contacted for breast cancer screenings. Of those, 52 percent of women completed the screening, and cancer was ultimately detected in six of those patients.
• In 2011, more than 83,000 patients were screened for colon cancer across the Sutter Medical Network, saving around 338 total life years due to preventive screening and early detection efforts.
• More than 2,500 children who turned 2 years old in 2011 were immunized throughout the Sutter Medical Network, resulting in a total net savings in one year of $682,986.

About IHA Awards

IHA awards are based on performance in three P4P quality measurement domains: meaningful use of health IT, patient experience, and clinical measures that include priority conditions such as cardiovascular, diabetes, musculoskeletal, respiratory, and prevention to support safer, more effective care.  

Top Performing award winners are identified by calculating composite scores in each of the three P4P quality measurement domains, which are then weighted according to the recommended P4P payment weightings to compute an overall composite score. Any physician organization whose overall composite score meets a comprehensive threshold based on the top 25% score for each measure included in P4P is designated a top performer. Top performing physician organizations in 2011 were identified by an overall composite score, based on their P4P domain scores, and compared against a comprehensive threshold calculated from the top 25 percent scores statewide for each P4P quality measure. 

Most Improved winners are determined by calculating the relative improvement for each physician group on the overall performance composite score for this year compared to the overall performance composite score for last year. In order to be eligible, a group must have improved performance in all three P4P quality measurement domains: meaningful use of health IT, patient experience, and clinical measures. The physician group in each of the eight P4P regions that has the highest improvement score for overall performance is recognized as the most improved group in that region.

The IHA P4P program is the largest non-governmental physician incentive program in the United States and includes eight health plans and nearly 200 physician organizations with approximately 35,000 physicians that serve about 10 million members across the state. For more information please visit www.iha.org.

About Sutter Health
Serving patients and their families in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns, Sutter Health doctors, not-for-profit hospitals and other health care service providers share resources and expertise to advance health care quality and access. The Sutter Medical Network includes many of California's top-performing, highest quality physician organizations as measured annually by the Integrated Healthcare Association. Sutter-affiliated hospitals are regional leaders in cardiac care, women's and children's services, cancer care, orthopedics and advanced patient safety technology.

For more information about the not-for-profit Sutter Health network, please visit:
www.sutterhealth.org | www.Facebook.com/SutterHealth | www.YouTube.com/SutterHealth | www.Twitter.com/SutterHealth

SOURCE Sutter Health