Humana to Reward Physicians for use of EHR in Improved Clinical Performance
October 22nd, 2010
Humana, Inc. has announced a collaboration with athenahealth that will link Humana’s Primary Care Rewards program with electronic health records provided by athenahealth. The Humana-athenahealth Medical Home EHR Rewards Program is designed to reward primary care physicians for quality performance and better clinical outcomes, as well as to increase the efficiency of the health care system as a whole.
Included in the program is a subsidy to eligible family and internal medicine physicians in the Humana network to implement athenahealth’s EHR service. One of the goals of the program is to make electronic record keeping an integral part of delivering quality health care services, reducing error, and improving communication among providers and giving physicians a better overall picture of a patient’s history and care profile.
The program will also measure physician encounters using HEDIS quality measures, which include opportunities to improve such areas as readmission rates, generic drug dispensing, and completion of health risk assessments.
Practices will be provided with customized goals and will be assessed regularly for performance and to provide feedback. Practices that demonstrate an improvement in their care delivery will receive care-coordination payments and will be eligible to receive additional benefits through a shared-savings program.
Humana considers this alliance with athenahealth a “leaping ahead” of the government’s efforts to drive meaningful use of EHRs. For more information on this program, please see Humana’s information release and FAQ.
Entry Filed under: Articles
Trackback this post