Findings from a study by the Oakland, Calif.-based Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) suggest there is considerable regional performance variation in healthcare in the state of California, and that physician organizations’ use of information technology (IT) is associated with better clinical quality.
Analysis of the P4P results in the study shows correlation between physician organizations’ clinical quality and adoption of health IT and its use in care management. In addition, says IHA, use of IT facilitates systematic collection of data, which can then be used for assessing compliance and conducting patient outreach. Physician organizations that have adopted health IT capabilities perform better than those that have not, it found.
The study includes a comparison of average composite scores across eight California regions in four performance measurement domains: clinical quality, patient experience, information technology-enabled systems, and coordinated diabetes care. The full report and an executive summary on 2008 results can be found on the IHA website.
