Adult Primary Care Recognition Program (APCRP)

Bridges to Excellence (BTE) has partnered with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to develop the Adult Primary Care Recognition Program, which is a recognition program designed specifically to benefit patients with chronic conditions and all those needing preventive services like cholesterol management and blood pressure control and encourage clinicians to take an active approach to treatment. 

Adult Primary Care Recognition Process:

1. Data are submitted through the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene-approved regional extension center vendors.
   • Clinicians can be assessed for either practice or individual recognition.
   • Practices submit specific information from their medical record data for defined samples of their patients with hypertension, diabetes and IVD.
2. The information submitted is converted into a numerator and denominator value for each of the measures in the Program, and then submitted to IPRO, BTE’s partner in scoring physicians for the APCRP.

3. IPRO scores each physician in each practice and determines whether or not they achieve the 50 points required to achieve Recognition. IPRO will also periodically audit randomly selected practices.

4. IPRO will then report the scores back to the NYCDOHMH who will communicate directly with the physicians. Physicians that achieve Recognition will be reported to BTE who, in turn, will communicate the list of Recognized physicians to participating plans.   

Program Goals: 

The purpose of the Adult Primary Care Recognition Program is to:

• Focus on measures resulting in the largest reductions in morbidity, mortality, and costs for New Yorkers while focusing on areas of disparity in care
• Recognize and reward multiple levels of performance and improvement
• Provide a road map to guide performance improvement and practice transformation strategies.  
• Bring consistency to market by standardizing the methodology for how clinicians are assessed and recognized.   

Program Measures:

Performance is evaluated for eligible clinicians or clinical practices on the consistency of treating and managing adult patients on the following preventive health and chronic care measures: 

• Prescribing antithrombotic treatment for patients with IVD or DM
• Blood pressure (BP) control for patients with hypertension
• LDL control for patients with dyslipidemia
• Screening for smoking status and cessation intervention for smokers
• HbA1c control for patients with diabetes
• Screening for body mass index
• Administering influenza vaccine 
• Administering pneumococcal vaccine
• Colorectal cancer screening
• Breast cancer screening 

To promote continuous quality improvement amongst participants, the Adult Primary Care Recognition Program is designed to include 3 levels or tiers of recognition:

Level I:  50% - 69% of the total possible points

Level II:  70% - 85% of the total possible points

Level III:  85% or more of the total possible points