St. John’s recognized by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
for improving health care for seniors

Initiatives developed by St. John’s Health System as part of a national demonstration project on ways to improve health care, are resulting in measurable benefits for seniors.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that St. John’s Health System and nine other physician groups participating in the CMS- sponsored Physician Group Practice (PGP) Demonstration significantly enhanced the quality of care for patients with diabetes during the first year of the demonstration.

The project is designed to study whether improving care in a proactive and coordinated manner also lowers costs.

St. John’s received a quality score of 100 percent as a result of meeting all benchmarks for the 10 diabetes measures.

St. John’s increased performance on every measure using a Web-based patient registry that also assists physicians in planning patient visits.

St. John’s patient registry, an electronic health record and reporting tool, allows physicians to monitor and coordinate the care of patients with chronic disease. The registry alerts the physician when certain tests or services are due.

“The registry has proven to be an invaluable tool ... and is just one tool in a whole toolbox that helps us better coordinate care and teach patients how to better care for themselves between doctor visits,” says Dr. James T. Rogers, St. John’s Clinic Primary Care Department chair.

St. John’s was assigned 32,646 Medicare patients into the project, the second largest study cohort among the 10 participating groups.

While the quality measures for year one focused on diabetes, St. John’s activities were not exclusive to diabetes; congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, arthritis and depression were included.

“We knew this project was the right thing to do. It was a method to advance our mission and the focus paid off in better care for our communities. We are pleased to be at the table with CMS and the other select health systems across the country to help explore issues around delivering cost-effective and high-quality care,” says Janet Pursley, R.N., vice president of St. John’s Medical Management Services. “By focusing our first year efforts on deploying tools and resources to support the integration of health care, we were able to address gaps in care and achieve these notable results.”

All 10 physician groups improved their scores from the base year achieving national benchmarks or quality improvement targets for Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes.

After its first full year of implementation, collectively, the physician groups generated savings for Medicare while increasing benefits for Medicare beneficiaries.

“Health care has always been focused on events of care, whether it’s a hospitalization or going to a doctor’s office. Payment systems have been designed around this focus. We have demonstrated that by focusing on better coordinating care, we can keep people healthier and avoid more expensive treatments down the road,” Dr. Rogers says.