Health IT helps CA medical groups improve care

Let's see if this news boosts group practice IT adoption. A new performance report from a large California trade group says the more groups participating in its Pay for Performance initiative used IT, the better they scored on some key clinical quality measures.

The Integrated Health Association (IHA), whose members include large health plans like Blue Shield of California, Blue Cross of California, Aetna and CIGNA, runs what is regarded as perhaps the nation's largest P4P program. All told, the IHA's program includes about 40,000 California doctors in 220 medical groups, which care for about 12 million individuals. In its analysis of P4P data for 2006, it found that groups meeting all of the IHA's criteria for IT investment had clinical scores 18 percent higher than groups that didn't meet any of its criteria.

The IHA's criteria for IT include measures of how groups use IT to manage patient populations, as well as whether they use it for e-prescribing, drug interaction prevention, lab result monitoring, e-messaging, and care reminders. Four years ago, two-thirds of the groups served by IHA didn't meet any IT criteria, but today only one-third don't, the group said.

To learn more about the report:
- read this San Francisco Business Times article

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