CareScience Symposium Reveals Healthcare Leaders Agree on Multiple Benefits to Physician Performance Measurement.

PHILADELPHIA -- 150 Leading Healthcare Providers Find Systematic Physician Performance Management Key to Improving the Quality of Care and Reducing Costs

CareScience, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX) providing care management, clinical analysis and regional health information organization data sharing solutions, today announced the benefits of physician performance measurement as determined by participants at the recent CareScience 2004 Symposium entitled "Evaluating Physician Performance: The Do's & Don'ts." The Symposium was held on October 22, 2004, at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia, PA.

The CareScience Symposium participants focused on integrating physician performance measurement into broad performance improvement strategies. Key findings of the conference participants included:

--Physician performance data is integral in creating and implementing specific care improvement strategies that produce lasting quality and efficiency improvements for patient populations

--Improved quality often decreases the cost of care

--Accurate and timely coding is an important organizational competency 

--Physician performance monitoring is a growing part of regulation and oversight, and in the future, it will increasingly be a determinant to physician and hospital compensation

--Automated, internal performance measurement systems that incorporate valid, patient-level risk assessment and that robustly evaluate flow, complications and treatment intensity, are more accurate and more efficient than external claims-based data reporting systems in determining quality of care

--There are significant opportunities to incorporate physician performance data into physician training and education programs

"Large care provider systems, hospitals and other healthcare organizations are under pressure to provide both physician and organization-level performance data, and it is only a matter of time until individual physician data becomes a common regulatory requirement," said Dr. Paul Antonecchia, Director, Medical Support Systems, St. Vincent's Medical Center, and a keynote speaker at the CareScience Symposium. "In order to impact the quality of the care provided, it is imperative that we measure and report physician level data, and put into practice improvement techniques to enhance the use of best medical practice in all patient settings."

The CareScience 2004 Symposium provided a forum for the nation's leading healthcare practitioners and administrators to discuss physician performance measurement, with the goal of ultimately improving the quality and efficiency of care across their organizations. The majority of practitioners agreed that the best way to effect positive change within their organizations was to computerize performance measurement data to examine systemic trends. Automating this process for both regulatory reporting such as Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCHAO) requirements and for internal quality improvement initiatives, allows for an accurate and more efficient analysis of the information -- beyond what can be gleaned from laborious paper chart reviews or from simplistic claims-based data.

Automation of physician performance measurement reporting also improves:

--Patient safety

--Education and training of new physicians

--Efficiency and cost of providing care

"One key benefit of instituting an automated, internal measurement system is the increased accuracy and level of detail it can supply over external reporting mechanisms," added Dr. Stephen Moore, vice president, medical management, Carolinas Medical Center. "Many external measurement studies, such as those from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, have been successful in identifying the lowest performing hospitals, but not the top performing hospitals. In addition, automated internal reporting and analysis can help determine why hospitals are underperforming and what the top performers are doing differently. Healthcare institutions can greatly improve overall quality on the system or departmental level with more accurate reporting and thorough analysis."

Physician performance assessment also allows doctors to obtain a better understanding of how best practices in care are being implemented and can serve as a tool, in addition to the medical literature and point-of-care systems, to uncovering and implementing treatment strategies that result in improved patient outcomes. This is increasingly important as hospital systems and their patients become more complex.

"Measuring physician performance will allow physician leaders to set goals and objectives, develop and track against care improvement plans, and demonstrate our value to our patients, our organizations and our payers," added Dr. David Shulkin, chief medical officer, Temple University Hospital and a speaker at the CareScience Symposium. "In addition, reporting on the quality of care is increasingly important as pay-for-performance approaches supplement or replace traditional fee-for-service and case-rate reimbursement paradigms."

The participants also provided methods to overcome common challenges to implementing physician performance assessment. One key challenge to the effective use of physician performance data is proper coding and data interpretation. Participants discussed the amount and accuracy of data culled from paper-based charts that are not coded to the level of specificity required, or contain coding that is inconsistent across a network of hospitals. As the medical community moves toward electronic medical records, this data will become more accurate. In the meantime, a focus on common techniques and the importance of data for analysis can produce significant improvements and reliable results.

Other key issues underscored by the event participants included:

--Staff acceptance of data as indicative of trends

--Data quality and consistency

--Concerns about data security

--Effectively translating internal data to external lay people

--Financial resources limitations

Various solutions to these issues and others were shared at the conference, such as physician training on data to increase buy-in and acceptance of measurement tracking and reporting by clinicians and staff. In addition, many organizations have instituted clear guidelines and procedures to affect improvements in physician performance and quality of care.

"The presentations from CareScience Symposium speakers, as well as feedback from more than 150 participants, reinforced the need for robust and fair physician performance measurement, based on proven methodologies, to improve the quality and efficiency of care across healthcare organizations," added Ronald A. Paulus, chief healthcare officer, Quovadx. "We are proud that our more than decade-long leadership in this area and our evolving technology and care process expertise is playing an important role in helping our customers to improve the quality of care and to modernize their performance reporting in support of pay-for-performance and other new reporting initiatives. We look forward to using the feedback from our participants to continue to improve the innovative products and consultative mentoring for which CareScience is known."

CareScience provides tools for risk-adjusted, automated physician performance monitoring through its Care Management Suite. The CareScience Care Management Suite is an ASP-based solution that uses cutting-edge research and methods to help hospitals and health systems improve quality, care management and clinical performance, with no upfront investment in computer hardware. This technology, coupled with CareScience's expert consulting services, help healthcare providers to access and analyze information about patient care, physician and faculty performance, care processes, resources and outcomes.

Speakers at the CareScience Symposium included:

--Robert E. Pezzoli, M.P.H., Temple University Health System

--Eugene A. Kroch, Ph.D., CareScience Research

--Margaret Horgan, R.N., M.S.N., CareScience Consulting

--Alex Hover, M.D., F.A.C.P., St. John's Regional Health Center

--Kenneth M. Davis, M.D., M.S.c., North Mississippi Health Services 

--Paul P. Antonecchia, M.D., M.B.A., F.A.C.P., St. Vincent's Medical Center

--K. Bobbi Traber, M.D., M.B.A., CareScience Consulting

--David J. Shulkin, M.D., Temple University Hospital

About CareScience

CareScience, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX), is one of the nation's leading providers of care management services and analytical solutions to hospitals and health systems, and a pioneer in community-wide clinical data exchange. CareScience supplies the people and technology to ensure that high-quality care is delivered, throughout the healthcare system, through clinical data access and clinical process transformation. For more information, please visit www.carescience.com.