Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Awards Medical Center for Delivering High-Quality Care
November 2, 2011
Sonora,
CA
Sonora Regional Medical Center has received awards for quality attainment and top improvement in a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – Premier healthcare alliance project that rewards hospitals for delivering high-quality care.
Due to its successes, the Medical Center will receive a bonus payment of $24,720 from CMS.
“We remain focused on improving the quality of care we provide our community,” said Julie Kline, RN, senior vice president of Patient Care Services. “We are pleased about this recognition from CMS and will continue to learn from and build on our successes.”
Based on year six results from the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project, the Medical Center received a total of five awards for Top Improvement and Attainment in the clinical areas of pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), and surgical care.
Attainment awards go to hospitals that attain or exceed the median composite quality score benchmark and receive incentive payments for this achievement. Top improvement is awarded to hospitals that are among the top 20 percent of hospitals with the largest percentage quality improvements in each clinical area. Top improvement hospitals are awarded additional incentive payments for this accomplishment.
“HQID tests the impact of economic incentives on quality,” said Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier, a healthcare quality and cost improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 77,000 other healthcare sites. “Supporting the Affordable Care Act, HQID members will now have six years of experience in using a value-based purchasing model.”
HQID is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality of inpatient care. For HQID participating hospitals, average scores improved by 18.6 percent over the project’s six years. Additional research by Premier showed that by September 2009, HQID participants scored, on average, 5.44 percentage points higher than non-participating hospitals.
Launched in October 2003 by CMS and Premier, the HQID project was a voluntary, pay-for-performance project comprised of 272 total hospitals across 36 states. Sonora Regional Medical Center volunteered in 2003 to participate in this project. Measures in the study include the proper administering of aspirin, beta blockers and antibiotics; and readmission and mortality rates.
