Baptist Participates in Two Medicare Quality of Care Projects

Jackson, Miss. - November 19, 2003 - Baptist Medical Center has signed up to participate in two national registries designed to improve quality care.

The Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration Project, managed by Premier, Inc. and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), increases Medicare payments in five clinical areas if hospital participants are among the top performers in the areas of heart attack, coronary artery bypass graft, heart failure, community acquired pneumonia and hip and knee replacement. Within the five clinical areas, CMS will evaluate hospital performance on 34 measures such as outcomes and mortality rates. Over 200 hospitals nationwide have signed up for the project.

"By paying differentially based on quality we're trying to directly improve care by paying more for high quality," said CMS Administrator Tom Scully. "Premier and the hospitals that have stepped forward to participate are showing the kind of leadership necessary to move the quality agenda forward. We couldn't be more pleased with the progress they've made so far."

Premier is a national group-purchasing and health care consulting firm. The company provides an array of resources supporting health services product supply and delivery through the United States.

Baptist is also a participant of The Quality Initiative: A Public Resource on Hospital Performance. Nearly 1,700 hospitals across the nation have signed up to share their information with the public about performance on 10 quality measures for three medical conditions including acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia.

The project builds upon Information and Quality Healthcare's (IQH's) strategies to identify illnesses and/or clinical conditions that affect Medicare beneficiaries in order to promote the best medical practices associated with the targeted clinical disorders, prevent or reduce further instances of these selected clinical disorders and prevent related complications.

IQH is the Mississippi Medicare Quality Improvement Agency working with hospitals statewide on quality improvement efforts surrounding the CMS quality measures. This information is housed on the CMS website at www.cms.hhs.gov .

"Baptist is committed to providing patients and their families with helpful information about their care. Participation in these type projects create a framework to register clinical information which can be readily available for the public regarding hospital quality," Baptist Executive Vice President Jerry Cotton said. "Our goal is to develop an important learning tool for patients as they discuss treatments and procedures with their caregivers and physicians."

Measures from these quality initiatives are drawn from organizations such as CMS administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Quality Forum and the American Hospital Association.

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