UMSI Assistant Professor Julia Adler-Milstein received a $344,298 grant from The Commonwealth Fund to support a two-year study of strategies and techniques that can improve primary care performance for high-cost, high-need patients.
Adler-Milstein and Lemak will seek to gain insight into specific tactics that best meet the needs of complex patients by first identifying the practices whose management of these patients improved while participating in the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Physician Group Incentive Program (PGIP). Established in 2005, PGIP is an incentive program that utilizes a wide variety of initiatives to encourage practice improvement by rewarding organizations and physicians for enhanced performance and value of health care delivered.
The study will incorporate double-blind case studies in selected improving- and non-improving practices and analyze how practices were able to improve care and value for complex patients. By focusing on the mechanisms that drive performance improvement, the results of this study will offer evidence to better inform policy makers, payers and practices in ongoing efforts to align payment and deliver better care in the U.S. health care system.
