BTE Recognition is based on clinical data, which clinicians and practices voluntarily submit to an independent performance assessment organization (PAOs) for scoring. PAOs are one of the two types of organizations who take part in the performance assessment for BTE Recognitions. PAOs score the data, while Data Aggregators (BTE Approved Registries) collect the data from clinicians for scoring.
PAOs
PAOs have two critical roles in their BTE efforts:
- Performance Evaluator: PAOs are third-party organizations responsible for evaluating the performance of clinicians and practices nationally and recognizing those who demonstrate they provide high quality care in their communities. PAOs validate and score the data submitted based on BTE’s clinical measures and specifications.
- Data Conduit: After recognizing eligible clinicians, PAOs act as the data conduit, submitting recognition data to BTE’s data platform, the Recognition Data Exchange (RDE). The RDE distributes individual clinicians’ recognition information to BTE administrators and consumer portals for use in their internal quality programs and public recognition. Consistent with BTE’s principles, all assessment programs are voluntary and anonymous for clinicians – only successful recognitions are reported to BTE by the PAOs.
BTE has partnerships with leading PAOs, including NCQA and CECity’s Medconcert.
National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations, recognizes physicians, physician groups and other health care providers in key clinical areas and manages the evolution of HEDIS®, the tool the nation’s health plans use to measure and report on their performance. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health choices. Through its performance assessment programs, NCQA currently helps BTE select which clinicians qualify for recognition for four of BTE’s programs:
- Physician Office Systems Recognition through its Physician Practice Connections (PPC) and Physician Practice Connections - Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH) programs
- Diabetes Care Recognition through its Diabetes Recognition Program (DRP)
- Cardiac Care Recognition through its Heart/Stroke Recognition Program (HSRP)
CECity’ Medconcert - Bridges to Excellence (BTE) App
CECity, based in PA, is the health care industry’s leading platform-as-a-service provider of cloud-based applications and distribution networks for performance improvement, quality reporting, and lifelong learning. Health care professionals and healthcare organizations, including QIOs, health plans, hospitals, chain pharmacies, professional medical certifying and licensing boards, publishers, professional societies, and academic medical centers, count on CECity to power their solutions for continuous performance improvement, performance assessment, clinical registries, professional development, patient safety, medication adherence, care coordination, population health informatics, and quality reporting.
MedConcert®, healthcare’s first social cloud platform for continuous performance improvement and lifelong learning, provides one convenient, integrated solution to help all stakeholders answer the question, “How Do We Improve?” Through MedConcert, providers, practices, and healthcare organizations engage in building secure social networks to share best practices and connect in meaningful ways to address a variety of critical needs driven by healthcare reform. Through the MedConcert App Store, individuals and health systems access a wide variety of applications for pay for performance, performance dashboards, population health management, clinical integration, performance improvement, professional certification, patient surveys, care coordination, patient registries, enterprise-wide benchmarking, and much more.
The BTE App currently offers assessment options for the following BTE Recognition programs:
- Asthma Care Recognition
- Cardiac Care Recognition
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Care Recognition
- Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) Care Recognition
- Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) Care Recognition
- Diabetes Care Recognition
- Hypertension Care Recognition
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Care Recognition
- Physician Office Systems Recognition
Through these PAOs, BTE offers multiple pathways for clinicians to apply for and achieve BTE Recognition. Eligible clinicians can extract medical record data and submit directly to a PAO (either NCQA or the BTE App on CECity’s Medconcert) or sign-up with a participating EMR or patient registry vendor to have their data submitted to a PAO (CECity’s Medconcert) on their behalf through BTE’s automated EMR/Registry System.
BTE’s Automated EMR/Registry System
In order to speed up, simplify and standardize a national clinician performance assessment process, BTE has created a performance assessment system for clinicians using electronic medical record data. The automated EMR/Registry System allows for rapid and independent, medical record-based clinician performance assessments by connecting local and national medical record data sources, or data aggregators (DAs) to BTE PAOs. Through the automated EMR/Registry System, BTE aims to: reduce the reporting burden for clinicians; leverage existing reporting/data aggregation initiatives; reduce data collection and reporting costs; facilitate the connection between quality improvement and incentives; and speed up cycle times between reporting and improvement.
Additionally, clinicians who achieve recognition in one of BTE’s disease-specific Care Recognition Programs by submitting electronic data through a CCHIT or Meaningful Use certified EMR for performance assessment will also receive a Level II Physician Office Systems Recognition.
BTE is partnering with several electronic DAs across the country to leverage existing reporting initiatives. These DAs include EMR vendors, patient registries, decision support tool vendors, and health information exchanges. DAs act as the interface between their clinician customers and BTE’s designated PAOs by ensuring the accuracy of data intake, extracting and sending the data to the PAOs for performance measurement, and reporting assessment results and quality improvement opportunities back to the clinicians.
With our automated system, clinicians must have electronic medical record data stored in a DA’s system. We currently work with the vendors in the following list. Next to each vendor is the count of clinician recognitions as of November 2016.
- AthenaHealth: 493 recognitions
- Baylor: 1,057 recognitions
- CECity: 1,576 recognitions
- CinciAF4Q: 619 recogntions
- eCW: 145 recognitions
- Forward Health: 113 recognitions
- GE-MQIC: 675 recognitions
- Medicity: 584 recognitions
- Meditab: 76 recognitions
- NextGen: 120 recogntions
- Trinity Hospital: 142 recognitions
- UT Southwestern: 191 recognitions
In addition, the NCQA has 60,841 recognitions.