Sacramento Bee Editorial Praises New Physician Group Performance Program
"There are not too many things to cheer about in today's cutthroat health care world," but a new physician group performance program developed by the Integrated Healthcare Association, a California health policy group, "is one of them," according to a Sacramento Bee editorial. Under the Pay for Performance program, six of the largest health plans in California will use a "common scorecard" to measure the performance of the physician groups in their HMO networks and offer doctors incentives based on their performance and "year-to-year improvements" (California Healthline, 1/16). According to the editorial, "HMOs and doctors have gotten together to figure out a smarter way to distribute the precious health care dollar." Although the program "isn't enough to revolutionize the system," the Bee predicts that "maybe it's enough to motivate even broader, still better ways to reward health plans and doctors who are the best at healing, as opposed to the best at sending the sick somewhere else." The editorial concludes, "In a perfect world, quality care would breed more quality care. Consumers would drift toward the better-performing doctor groups and health plans. And those losing patients would either clean up their acts or go out of business. Today's system is anything but perfect. But improvements will come one step at a time. This is such a step" (Sacramento Bee, 1/18).
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