Advancing High-Value, Equitable Care Together: 2021 Year in Review

A message from Jeff Rideout, MD, MA

With the holiday season upon us and the year drawing to a close, I’d like to reflect on 2021 and look ahead to the coming year. I am proud of what IHA and our partners have accomplished together during another year of unprecedented challenges, and I’m happy to share some highlights:

IHA formed a Health Equity Committee to provide strategic guidance to the IHA Program Governance Committee and IHA leadership.
The Department of Healthcare Access and Information (formerly OSHPD) selected IHA and Onpoint to support the state’s new All-Payer Claims Database, the HPD.
We began a partnership with Health Net to improve encounter data collection and reporting through the Encounter Data Governance Entity (EDGE).
The Symphony program is now exchanging over 200,000 unique provider records with plans and providers and is on track to be self-sustaining by the end of 2022.
For the second year, we held a fully virtual annual Stakeholders' Conference. Registered attendees reached over 400, an all-time high.

Align. Measure. Perform. (AMP)

As IHA’s signature suite of performance measurement programs, AMP reached some major milestones this year. For the second year, we released final results for all four AMP products at the same time. In 2020, we pivoted to focus on measuring what matters most during the pandemic, prioritizing a more limited set of measures. This year, we continued to adapt accountability measures and incentive design in response to the ongoing challenges from COVID-19.

Finally, last month we recognized 81 provider organizations in California who achieved top scores in quality, total cost of care, patient experience, and performance improvement. This includes 21 Excellence in Healthcare Award winners, who performed in the top 50% across quality, patient experience, and cost. The public results will be available on the Office of the Patient Advocate’s medical group report card.

Stay up-to-date on AMP

You can find the Final MY 2021 AMP Program Guide, Final MY 2022 AMP Measure Sets, and 2021 IHA Public Comments and Responses on our website. Also, be sure to register for the January AMP Program Updates Webinar to hear important program information.

California Regional Healthcare Cost & Quality Atlas

The Atlas measures healthcare performance across the state, providing a snapshot of where it's performing well and where it’s not. The tool displays clinical quality, hospital utilization, and cost of care metrics for 70% of Californians.

The 2019 results, released earlier this year, show the following trends:

Integrated groups that accept any level of risk through capitation have quality scores almost 10% higher, and those who accept full risk have scores 13% higher than those that don’t (or fee-for-service). This is based on a composite score across 12 prevention and chronic care clinical quality measures for roughly half (7.5 million) of the state’s commercial HMO and PPO population, excluding Kaiser.
Integrated groups that accept any level of risk through capitation have at least 11% lower total cost of care than those that don’t.
Given plan design features, this means consumer out of pocket costs are significantly lower with higher quality in networks using integrated care providers.

For additional insights into cost and quality of care, visit the Atlas website.

Symphony Provider Directory

As the statewide platform for provider data management, Symphony now has 18 health plans and purchasers and more than 100 provider organizations enrolled. In 2021, efforts focused on expanding capabilities to further standardization and enable bi-directional data ingestion. We’ve also worked closely with industry stakeholders to boost client engagement and continued to hold educational activities to prepare clients to exchange data.

At the Stakeholders’ Conference last month, a panel of speakers answered questions about the Symphony Provider Directory and discussed how they overcame challenges uncovered during the onboarding process. Access the recording and slides to hear the full presentation.

Looking ahead to 2022
Going forward, Symphony’s technology partner Availity will become the sole technology partner for the directory. Availity has expertise in healthcare utility creation and technology, including data ingestion technology. Consolidating to a single vendor will foster alignment and efficiency and support IHA’s vision of long-term viability for Symphony. Beyond the transition to Availity, Symphony will continue to drive data ingestion capabilities for our participating health plans and provider organizations.

The spirit of giving

There’s no better way to celebrate the holidays than by giving back. We are proud to share that IHA staff collectively contributed nearly $2,000 to the Alameda County Community Food Bank this holiday season.

Happy holidays

As we look ahead to 2022, we know the external challenges facing the healthcare industry and the world will still be present. However, our commitment to fostering a high-value, more equitable healthcare system remains unwavering. With your continued partnership, we’ll continue to build a healthcare system that works better for everyone. We have accomplished a lot, we still have much to do, and most of all, we have much to be thankful for.

With sincere appreciation for all you do, we wish you and your loved ones all the warmth, hope, and joy the holiday season has to offer.