News in brief - Aug. 9, 2004

Calif. Blue Cross pays quality bonuses - Tenet sells four hospitals - Group plans efficiency measure

Calif. Blue Cross pays quality bonuses

Blue Cross of California paid $56.9 million in quality bonus incentives to 134 physician groups for their performance in 2003, doubling payout and nearly doubling the number of groups that received money last year.

Payments are related to the plan's quality scorecard, which was implemented for its HMO medical groups in 2001. Quality measures include patient satisfaction surveys, waiting times for appointments, number of complaints, and patient turnover.

Tenet sells four hospitals

Tenet Healthcare Corp. has agreed to sell four Los Angeles-area hospitals for about $100 million as part of its ongoing restructuring effort.

The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based chain announced July 19 that it had reached an agreement to sell Garfield Medical Center, Monterey Park Hospital, Greater El Monte Community Hospital and Whittier Hospital Medical Center to AHMC Inc., which operates two other hospitals in California. AHMC is owned by a physician, Jonathan Wu, MD, who also serves as the company's chair.

The four hospitals are among 27 that Tenet announced it was shedding in January as part of a major restructuring and corporate overhaul aimed at resuscitating the company after more than a year of legal and financial woes.

Group plans efficiency measure

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, a collection of physician groups, hospitals, health plans and businesses across Wisconsin, has announced plans to expand its measuring and reporting process to include economic efficiency and value comparisons.

The group, which formed last year and released quality and cost data to consumers, is planning to incorporate more information into a more comprehensive measurement unit. While collecting price figures and quality data for some procedures, the group also hopes to devise a formula that will produce a useable value quotient for patients, one they can use to compare performance among different groups and hospitals.

"Our 2003 report compared organizations from a charge perspective on certain DRGs," said John Toussaint, MD, chair of the collaborative and president and CEO of ThedaCare, a health system based in Appleton, Wis. "That's not the best way to compare who's doing the most efficient work."

Dr. Toussaint declined to give a timetable for publishing the data because the groups involved still are working to determine the best formula to measure economic efficiency.