Cigna Collaborative Care Arrangements with OB/GYN Practices in Florida and Texas Show Early Success
May 04 2015 - 10:00AM
Business Wire
- Value-based initiative uses incentives
to engage OB/GYN doctors and help drive improved health,
affordability and experience
- Aims to reduce primary cesarean
deliveries and early deliveries for non-medical reasons, increase
use of generic drugs
- Focus includes identification and
referral of at-risk pregnant women, maternal mental health
Early results from OB/GYN medical practices in Florida and Texas
that participate in Cigna (NYSE: CI) Collaborative Care initiatives
show that they’re improving quality and lowering medical costs.
Cigna Collaborative Care is a value-based initiative that uses
incentives to engage health care professionals and help drive
improved health, affordability and patient experience. It initially
focused on large primary care physician groups but was expanded to
include hospitals, small primary care practices and specialists,
including OB/GYN practices.
Through collaboration between medical practices and Cigna, the
OB/GYN program aims to reduce primary cesarean deliveries and
inductions of labor prior to 39 weeks gestation for non-medical
reasons, increase the use of generic drugs, and shift certain
gynecologic surgical procedures to less-costly sites of service.
The program also focuses on the identification and referral of
at-risk pregnant women, safety certification for office-based
procedures and maternal mental health screening.
The OB/GYN practices participating in the program are
compensated with a patient care management payment that rewards
them for meeting a comprehensive set of quality and cost efficiency
targets. The payment varies based on how well the group performs.
The expectation is that OB/GYN practices that meet their targets
will have better quality scores and better cost efficiency than
other OB/GYN practices in their markets.
After its first year participating in the program, Women’s Care
Florida, with offices in Tampa and Orlando, showed significant
results:
- 15.2 percent improvement in its primary
cesarean delivery rate
- 6.4 percent improvement in generic
dispensing rate
- 3.7 percent rate for early elective
deliveries, better than national rate of five percent
“We are pleased to participate in this collaboration with
Cigna,” said Donald F. Wilson, M.D., chief medical officer for
Women’s Care Florida. “Properly aligned incentives help us focus on
what is needed to fulfill our mission, ‘Exceptional Women's Care
for Every Patient, Every Time’. We value meaningful partnership
with health plans as we all seek to deliver high quality care in
the most efficient manner possible.”
After its first year participating in the program, Southwest
Women’s Health Alliance (formerly Obstetrical & Gynecological
Associates) in Houston also showed significant results:
- Improved total medical cost performance
by three percent
- 7.6 percent improvement in generic
dispensing rate
- 93 percent overall satisfaction in
patient satisfaction survey
- 9.5 percent improvement in site of
service rate for outpatient procedures, through safe and efficient
shifting of site of service for select gynecologic surgical
procedures, which lowered costs while maintaining quality
"I am proud of the commitment our doctors made in this pilot
project to make women's health care in Houston better,” said Mark
Cone, M.D., president of Southwest Women’s Health Alliance. “We
sought to improve patient satisfaction scores, implement new
patient safety programs, improve the quality of our care by
following evidence-based medicine and lead our market in quality
metrics. Furthermore, we proved we could accomplish that and bend
the total medical cost curve. I appreciate Cigna's dedication to
bringing these types of programs to the market. Joint efforts
between providers and payers like this demonstrate the type of
collaborative efforts we will need to fix the health care delivery
system.”
“The Cigna Collaborative Care model demonstrated our ability to
help large primary care physician groups improve the quality and
cost of care,” said John Keats, M.D., a Cigna senior medical
director and practicing OB/GYN specialist. “These two medical
practices are pioneers that are helping us adapt that model to
OB/GYN specialty care. We’re very pleased with their early
successes and look forward to further collaboration that will help
this model evolve.”
Cigna has pilot programs with four other OB/GYN groups and
expects to launch up to six more in 2015. Once those programs have
been in place for a full year, Cigna will evaluate the results and
determine how to convert them from “test and learn” pilot programs
to a standard reimbursement model for specialty care.
When the company started Cigna Collaborative Care for large
primary care physician groups in 2008, the program consisted of one
pilot that expanded to several more pilots within a few years. “We
learned from those early efforts and used that knowledge to build a
very successful program that now encompasses more than 120
physician practices in 29 states. We hope to have similar success
with OB/GYN groups and other specialty medical practices,” Keats
said.
About Cigna
Cigna Corporation (NYSE: CI) is a global health service company
dedicated to helping people improve their health, well-being and
sense of security. All products and services are provided
exclusively by or through operating subsidiaries of Cigna
Corporation, including Connecticut General Life Insurance Company,
Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Life Insurance Company of
North America and Cigna Life Insurance Company of New York. Such
products and services include an integrated suite of health
services, such as medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy,
vision, supplemental benefits, and other related products including
group life, accident and disability insurance. Cigna maintains
sales capability in 30 countries and jurisdictions, and has more
than 86 million customer relationships throughout the world. To
learn more about Cigna®, including links to follow us on Facebook
or Twitter, visit www.cigna.com.
About Women’s Care Florida
Women’s Care Florida, LLC, (WCF) is a single specialty women’s
health physician group offering patient care services in Obstetrics
and Gynecology, Gynecologic Oncology, Urogynecology, Gynecologic
Pathology, Breast Surgery and Genetic Counseling. The group has 200
providers that care for more than 350,000 patients annually at 58
outpatient locations, including a women’s services laboratory and a
breast center.
About Southwest Women’s Health Alliance
Southwest Women's Health Alliance is a private practice OB/GYN
group in the Greater Houston Area. Originally Obstetrical and
Gynecological Associates, founded in 1962, we have recently
reorganized to better meet our goals of becoming the industry
leader in developing models of health care delivery that are more
affordable and more accessible. Our vision is to provide the best
patient care with a focus on four pillars: 1) a better patient
experience; 2) delivering the highest quality evidence-based
medical care; 3) ensuring the highest patient safety standards; and
4) always looking for opportunities to make the care more
affordable for the patient and the employer. We have 52 providers
located at 22 different office and ancillary facilities
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CignaMark Slitt, 860-226-2092mark.slitt@cigna.com
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