For the second year in a row, the UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics (UW Medicine) received a Leadership Recognition Award from health insurance company Premera Blue Cross for participation and support in the Premera Quality Score Card program.
“The program reports on how well different medical groups do in caring for different medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease,” said Dr. Peter McGough, chief medical officer for UW Medical Neighborhood Clinics and associate clinical professor for the UW Department of Family Medicine.
UW Medicine volunteered to work with Premera “to develop and improve” the Quality Score Card program, which is based on national guidelines.
“The program was initiated to help develop evidence-based outcome measures in key areas of health care,” said Elizabeth Lowry, media relations manager for UW Medicine.
As the prevalence of diabetes and asthma increases, UW Medicine and the Quality Score Card Program see these two diseases, along with others, as the focus of primary care treatment.
For example, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the percentage of Washington state residents suffering from diabetes has increased from 3.4 percent in 1994 to 6.3 percent in 2005.
“Some of the key areas are chronic disease (e.g. diabetes, asthma and heart disease), cancer screening (e.g. breast and colon cancer) and health maintenance care for children (which ensure that children are growing and developing normally, and receiving important immunizations),” McGough wrote in an e-mail.
Later this year, a study on Premera and medical partners will be funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which, in 2006, provided $403 million to studies and programs for improving health care in the United States.
“The study aims to assess the groundbreaking work in the clinical quality improvement partnership between Premera and its medical group partners, including UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics,” Lowry said.
McGough cited UW Medicine’s pre-eminence in primary care as the foundation for a strong clinic.
“We are fortunate to have many UW primary care graduates as [UW Medicine] physicians and mid-level providers, and many important innovations in providing better primary care utilized at [the clinic] originated at the UW Medicine training programs,” McGough said. “In turn, (UW Medicine) provides support and ideas for the primary care teaching programs.”
McGough also said the relationship between UW Medicine and Premera is mutually beneficial for both entities.
“Internally, this has stimulated UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics to focus on areas of care in which we were looking to excel, especially diabetes care and women’s health care. We are very proud of this partnership,” he said.
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