UCLA Medical Group ranks high

The Integrated Healthcare Association ranked UCLA Medical Group, which is comprised of UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine faculty physicians, a top-performing California physician organization last week.

“The UC as a medical group, in addition to providing all this high-tech care, we’re also able to demonstrate a very high level of performance,” said Samuel Skootsky, medical director of the UCLA Medical Group

Dolores Yanagihara, the program director of the Integrated Healthcare Association, said the ranking is “validation from an external party of all the good work they’re doing.”

The Association’s pay for performance program assesses physician organizations, and it groups and rates them based on clinical quality.

The rankings are specifically determined by calculation of overall clinical performance, patient satisfaction and the use of information technology to support safe patient care, Yanagihara said.

UCLA was ranked in the top 20 percent of all medical groups in the state, she added.

Skootsky said the university is the only academic medical group in the top percentage.

And the high rank is coveted, Yanagihara said.

“Among the 230 physician groups participating in California’s pay for performance program, these are the leaders in the use of evidence-based health care processes and health information technology that result in better care for patients,” said Don Rebhun, an Integrated Healthcare Association Board Chair, according to a statement released by the association.

UCLA was chosen out of 47 California medical groups and only 10 groups were chosen in the Los Angeles area, including Cedars-Sinai, according to an Association statement.

Physician groups are able to receive financial rewards from various health plans based on their performance on the measures evaluated, thus making the rankings important.

Though Skootsky declined to state a specific amount that the UCLA Medical Group received for its rank, he said it is a significant amount of money that allows the group to invest in infrastructure necessary to provide performance feedback to its physicians.

“What you need to do for this type of work is to measure physician performance and give them a report about how well they’re doing,” he said.

Once physician performance is reviewed, the group is then able to improve even more, he said.

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