CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield's patient-centered medical home program has reported lower than expected costs for the third consecutive year and has made quality gains for the 1.1 million members covered by the program.
The key quality indicators tracked by CareFirst included a 6.4 percent decrease in hospital admissions, an 11.1 percent decrease in days spent in the hospital, an 8.1 percent decrease in readmissions and an 11.3 percent decrease in outpatient health facility visits when compared to CareFirst members not seeing PCMH physicians.
The rate of increase in medical care spend has slowed from an average of 7.5 percent per year in the five years leading up to the program's launch to 3.5 percent in 2013.
More than 4,000 primary care providers currently participate in CareFirst's PCMH program and are organized into panels to coordinate care of members who have chosen them. These panels can earn outcome incentive awards based on both the level of quality and degree of savings they actually achieve against projections.
"Increasingly, the data we are seeing on quality and cost for the physicians participating in our PCMH program and our members under their care gave us confidence that our program is taking hold and headed in the right direction," Chet Burrell, president and CEO of CareFirst, said in a release.
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