Lake Success, NY, April 12, 2007 -- In the first published nationwide survey of state Medicaid programs on "pay-for-performance" practices, more than half of all programs state that they provide financial incentives to health care providers for better quality care. Almost 85 percent of states plan to have pay-for-performance programs within five years. Researchers also found that most current programs focus on womens, childrens and adolescents health issues. The study is published today by The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation working toward a high-performance health system. Authors are from IPRO, a not-for-profit quality evaluation and improvement organization and The Kuhmerker Consulting Group, LLC, a health care consulting firm.
"Medicaid is a major source of funding of health care in every state and, therefore, has a significant influence on the health care system," said Thomas Hartman, Vice President for Health Care Quality Improvement for IPRO and co-author of the study. "But each state operates its program independently of the others. We thought it would be helpful to provide a detailed snapshot of what is taking place around the nation so that state officials have solid information on which to base decisions about pay-for-performance."
Hartman and co-author Kathryn Kuhmerker, President of the Kuhmerker Group and former Medicaid Director for New York State, found several trends. Nine Medicaid programs (Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington) are joining in statewide and regional pay-for-performance and quality improvement efforts, and others are considering entering into such collaborations. Health information technology is a focus of numerous Medicaid pay-forperformance programs (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Utah). In these programs, providers are given incentives to adopt electronic health records and electronic prescribing, o
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Contact: Mary Mahon
mm@cmwf.org
212-606-3853
Commonwealth Fund
12-Apr-2007