Physician Office Link

The Physician Office Link (POL) program is focused on promoting the office practice’s use of information systems to enhance the quality of patient care. Office practice sites that implement specific processes to reduce errors and increase quality can earn up to $50 for each patient covered by a participating employer.

To obtain the rewards available through the BTE POL reward program, eligible physicians must demonstrate that they have implemented systematic office processes by passing NCQA's Physician Practice Connections assessment program or PPC-Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH) assessment program.  Alternatively, the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) in your area may be partnering with BTE to recognize practices for POL rewards as well.  Please refer to your local region page to find out if your state's Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) is assessing practices.

The practice assessment has 3 possible levels of completion:

• Level I elements assess the use of evidence-based standards of care, maintenance of patient registries for the purpose of identifying and following up with at-risk patients and provision of educational resources to patients.

• Level II elements ask whether practices use electronic systems to maintain patient records, provide decision support, enter orders for prescriptions and lab tests and provide patient reminders.

• Level III elements ask whether a practice’s electronic systems interconnect and whether they are “interoperable” with other systems, whether they use nationally accepted medical code sets and whether they can automatically send, receive and integrate data such as lab results and medical histories from other organizations’ systems.

In May 2006, the article “Systematic Review: Impact of Health Information Technology on Quality, Efficiency, and Costs of Medical Care” was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine Journal.  The article concluded that health information technology is a key component in the improvement of quality and efficiency of care that is delivered.  The POL program encourages physicians and practices around the country to adopt health information technology by rewarding those providers that take this step towards the improvement of quality.

Note: In 2006 NCQA released version 2 of its PPC assessment program.  Physicians in practices that have previously completed and have active recognition under NCQA's PPC version 1 may still be eligible for POL rewards.  Practices that have completed 6 or more modules are now recognized by BTE at Level I, while practices that have completed 9 or more modules are recognized by BTE at Level II.  Please note that to achieve Level III POL recognition, practices must complete PPC version 2 or PPC-PCMH.

*Please note that some of this information such as reward amounts could be specific to a region. For market specifics, go to your local BTE region page.