Three California Companies Launch Pay-for-Performance Initiative
Cisco Systems, Intel and Oracle have created a consortium to financially reward physicians groups that use health IT to improve care for the companies' employees, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
The Silicon Valley Pay-For-Performance Consortium will offer up to $150,000 annually to physicians and practice-groups that use services such as electronic health records, physician-patient online chats and registries that automatically send health reminders to patients with chronic diseases, the Mercury News reports (Seyfer, San Jose Mercury News, 2/1).
"Ultimately it is about employers and physicians working together to improve the quality and safety of care," according to Jeffrey Rideout, Cisco's vice president of corporate health care (Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, 1/31).
Organizations that are eligible for the consortium's financial awards include Camino Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, San Jose Medical Group, Santa Clara County Individual Practice Association, Santa Cruz Medical Foundation and Stanford Hospital and Clinics. In order to receive the awards, the groups must participate in a National Committee for Quality Assurance program that tracks how much the groups adopt health IT (San Jose Mercury News, 2/1).
The three companies hope the initiative will help accelerate the adoption of EHRs and other health IT, Technology Daily reports. "The goal is if we can build it where we all have the most employees...we then can take it nationally," Rideout said (Belopotosky, Technology Daily, 1/31). The consortium plans to grant the first awards early next year (San Jose Mercury News, 2/1).