Premera Blue Cross is collaborating with U.S. Anesthesia Partners to create a quality-based incentive program.
Here's what you should know:
1. The contract is one of the first between the plan and a specialty group like USAP. It's also among USAP's first value-based contracts.
2. The contract will incentivize improvements in patient satisfaction, perioperative temperature management and post-anesthetic transfer of care.
3. Patient satisfaction will be measured by feedback from a third-party survey.
4. USAP provides anesthesia services to most Swedish campuses and Proliance Surgeons facilities in Washington. Both providers are based in Seattle.
"USAP's robust data capture technology allows us to compare our performance against these important metrics. This provides us with real-time measurement of our performance and enables continuous improvement to ensure excellence in patient care and in the quality of anesthesia service we are privileged to deliver for our facility partners," David Lavitt, MD, clinical governance board chair for U.S. Anesthesia Partners in Washington said in a statement.