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Memorial Medical Center Recognized for Top Performance in CMS/Premier Pay-for-Performance Project

Posted on: Friday, 26 January 2007, 15:01 CST

Memorial Medical Center has been named one of the top performers in a groundbreaking pay-for-performance project that rewards hospitals for delivering higher-quality care in five clinical areas.

In the second year of the three-year project, Memorial Medical Center was rated in the top 10 percent of top-performing hospitals for hip and knee replacement and in the top 20 percent for coronary artery bypass graft, or heart bypass surgery, in the nationwide Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID). The federal government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Premier Inc., a national alliance of nonprofit hospitals, have been conducting the project.

"This demonstration is an opportunity for everyone in our hospital, including physicians and nurses, as well as other staff members, to achieve even higher levels of quality patient care, to learn new ways to improve the care we provide and to help reduce healthcare costs," said Jim Benté, Memorial's vice president of quality and organizational development. "These measures test whether hospitals and the doctors who practice in them are using specific treatments proven through scientific study to reduce complications, readmissions and mortality."

Based on its second-year scores, Memorial Medical Center will receive a bonus payment of $137,420 from CMS, which awarded incentive payments of $8.7 million to 115 top-performing hospitals. The hospital received $95,136 for its care in hip and knee replacement and $42,284 for its care in coronary artery bypass graft. In the project's first year, Memorial Medical Center received $32,397 for superior performance in heart failure care.

Memorial Medical Center was the first hospital in the nation to sign up for the program in 2003. Participating hospitals volunteered to have their quality data for high-volume clinical conditions analyzed in a standard way. Hospitals in the top 10 percent for one of the five clinical conditions are paid a 2 percent bonus on their Medicare DRG (diagnosis-related group) payments; hospitals in the second 10 percent receive a 1 percent bonus.

CMS has partnered with Premier Inc. on a three-year demonstration based on a set of standard measures of individual hospital quality performances. The purpose of the demonstration is to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care and to test the impact of economic incentives on quality. The five clinical areas measured are acute myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass graft, heart failure, pneumonia and hip and knee replacement surgery.

Data from the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration's second year demonstrates a significant improvement in the quality of care across the five clinical focus areas, including 1,284 heart-attack patient lives saved.

"The main point is that the majority of hospitals in the HQID project, even those on the lower end of the scale, improved their quality of care across the board with respect to reliable use of scientifically based principles," said Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president and CEO at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

"For over a decade, Premier has been committed to working with hospitals to improve clinical quality and patient outcomes while safely reducing costs," said Richard Norling, president and CEO of Premier Inc. "The findings from the first two years of the HQID project clearly show that the project is having a positive impact on the quality of care in our nation's hospitals and on the lives of patients and their families."

Memorial Medical Center, 701 N. First St., is a not-for-profit, community-based hospital in the Illinois Medical District at Springfield.

Source: Business Wire

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