NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSII) and a leading provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity solutions, today announced its successful collaboration with clients that received assistance through the Primary Care Information Project (PCIP), a bureau of the NYC Health Department. In January 2009, PCIP launched Health eHearts, a pilot pay-for-quality program administered by the Fund for Public Health in New York that incentivizes practices using an electronic health record to help patients improve heart health.
“As efforts to achieve Meaningful Use also pick up steam, the use of technology to impact overall patient health through discrete clinical data capture and better performance tracking will give practices like Preferred Health Partners and Staten Island Physician Practice a significant head start on meeting the finalized criteria.”
Five NextGen Healthcare clients were selected to participate in the program, which provides incentives for achieving core quality health measures. Participating practices are eligible for greater incentives when achieving targets with patients that are more difficult to treat based on insurance status or an existing co-morbidity diagnosis. The potential quality incentive reward to each participating practice is capped at $100,000.
NextGen Healthcare clients Preferred Health Partners (PHP) and Staten Island Physician Practice both received the maximum incentive, with each practice demonstrating a 7X improvement over the capped performance measures and reward amount. The organizations implemented NextGen Ambulatory EHR in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and utilized the solution's fully integrated NextGen® Health Quality Measures Reporting Module to capture discrete data elements and review progress against the identified measures. Data capture was completely transparent and done without interfering in patient care, as the necessary discrete data points were documented during the course of the provider's existing workflow. Further, the module automatically calculated outcomes and generated clinical reports that offered feedback for the practices' ongoing performance tracking. NextGen Ambulatory EHR also provided the electronic submission capabilities needed to seamlessly submit data to the health department.
"In order to participate in this groundbreaking pay-for-quality (P4Q) program, we had to compile and report on data from across our enterprise of 10 locations and more than 165 physicians," said Carmen Soto, project and business intelligence manager for Preferred Health Partners. "NextGen provided us the platform needed to quickly and accurately complete this massive task, as well as participate in other emerging projects such as health information exchange and Patient-Centered Medical Home. Our physicians were excited to see how they were performing according to these established quality measures, and our patients are benefiting from consistent preventive care."
"Through our use of NextGen® technology, we were able to realize significant improvements in patient cholesterol and blood pressure levels," said Lisa Martinez, applications manager for Staten Island Physician Practice. "We are also able to leverage the same NextGen® technology to participate in Physician Quality Reporting Initiative and Bridges to Excellence efforts. The solution is so easy to use that it has enabled us to move very quickly into these additional programs without customization, extra work for our physicians or impact on patient care."
"We're excited to launch a program focusing on the gaps in clinical preventive services that can greatly reduce mortality in New York City. Health eHearts is a great example of how we can use health information technology to improve health and track our progress in a measurable way," said Sarah Shih from the Primary Care Information Project.
"We have a strong track record of collaborating with clients to meet the requirements for national and state level P4Q programs like eHearts, Physician Quality Reporting Initiative and Bridges to Excellence," said Charlie Jarvis, Vice President of Healthcare Services and Government Relations at NextGen Healthcare. "As efforts to achieve Meaningful Use also pick up steam, the use of technology to impact overall patient health through discrete clinical data capture and better performance tracking will give practices like Preferred Health Partners and Staten Island Physician Practice a significant head start on meeting the finalized criteria."
Aster DM Healthcare reveals top foods to combat PCOS symptoms