Blue Shield of California awards $29.5M in bonuses to medical groups - Sacramento Business Journal:

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million in performance bonuses to California medical groups and independent practicewassociations (IPAs) this year, compared with $31 million last That makes this the third year in a row that Blue Shield’w physician group bonuses have been more or less in the range of $29.5 millio to $31 million. Last year, David Joyner, San Francisco-based Blue Shield’x senior vice president of network told the San Francisco Business Timees thatits pay-for-performance payouts were stable in part because of concerns that “the underlying improvements in actuap (physician group) performance have been quite small, incremental,” and fears that healthu plans such as Blue Shielr that distribute more generous bonuses might have troublde keeping their premium costs for employers in line with healtbh plans that skimp on such On Tuesday, Blue Shield officials could not immediately be reached for comment o n the health plan’ws apparently static budget for performance Supporters say the bonuses give physician groups an incentive to improve quality; critics say the payments aren’t largde enough really to influence quality to a significant because the bonuses are spread out among a host of medicao groups and IPAs statewide.
This time around, nearlty half of the bonus payments are part ofthe Oakland-based ’sw voluntary pay-for-performance program, which rewardzs medical groups on various quality measures, including clinicall care, patient satisfaction and use of informatiob technology. This year, based on IHA Blue Shield will pay medica groups and independent practice associations based on both meeting IHA qualityy goals and showing improvement on its clinicaland patient-satisfaction with 80 percent reflectinhg overall performance and 20 percent improvement.
In its 23 statement, Blue Shield said it uses the IHA standardx to track and reward physician organizations on a rangee ofclinical factors, includiny childhood immunizations, diabetes management, cholesterol management, and use of appropriatre medications by those with asthma. This it’s also helping medical groupa that ranked in the bottomj 25th percentile of theIHA pay-for-performance program to find ways to improve.