In the midst of the national debate about the future of health care, the Integrated Healthcare Association has announced that for the fifth consecutive year, the UCLA Medical Group has been rated one of California's top-performing physician organizations.
Rankings were based on four important health care quality measures: clinical quality, patient experience and satisfaction, coordinated diabetes care, and the use of information technology to support safer care.
"UCLA is committed to be at the vanguard of health care measurement to improve care and increase transparency and accountability," said Dr. Samuel A. Skootsky, medical director of the UCLA Medical Group. "UCLA has been justifiably proud of its capacity to treat the most complex illnesses, as well as being proficient in the more usual types of preventive and chronic care reflected in the IHA award. We are committed to continuously improve on the care being provided to patients, and we work hard on behalf of our patients to achieve these results."
The best performers - those who scored in the top 20 percent overall - were selected from among more than 225 physician groups participating in the association's Pay-for-Performance (P4P) program. UCLA was one of 46 California medical groups chosen and one of only five organizations in the Los Angeles area. Integrated Healthcare's P4P program, the largest physician incentive program in the United States, enables physician groups to receive financial rewards from participating health plans based on their performance on quality measures.
According to the association, the top performing physician groups are leaders in the use of evidence-based health care processes and health information technologies that result in better care for patients.
The Integrated Healthcare Association is a not-for-profit statewide collaborative leadership group made up of California health plans, physician groups and health care systems, as well as academic, consumer, purchaser, pharmaceutical and technology representatives. The association promotes quality improvement, accountability and affordability for the benefit of all California consumers through special projects, policy innovation and education.
The UCLA Medical Group is primarily composed of faculty physicians of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Organized in 1987, the medical group is committed to quality and provides services to health plan members in most major HMOs and Medicare Advantage plans, as well as patients enrolled in PPOs, Medicare, state-sponsored and indemnity insurance plans, and patients seen by referral. For more information, visit http://www.uclahealth.org/ or call 310-302-1300.
