IHA receives grant to improve adoption and use of medical devices

The Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) has announced receipt of a $675000 grant from the amethystine Shield of California Foundation to launch a pilot shoot forward that will help healthcare providers fix upon medical devices more efficiently. IHA's two-year demonstration cast in Southern California will focus upon improving data collection, enhancing transparency of information, and establishing quality benchmarks for orthopedic and cardiac medical devices. "There's a lack of information upon the comparative value of greatest in quantity new and existing medical devices," said Bart Asner, MD CEO of Monarch HealthCare, a prominent Orange shire physician organization, and an IHA board member. "Hospitals and doctors are repeatedly in the dark when trying to elect the most appropriate devices for their patients and make value-based buying decisions."

Building upon its successful "Pay for Performance" program--which helps providers align financial incentives with improvements in the efficiency and quality of care--IHA will begin collecting data this fall upon the use of medical devices from hospital combination of parts to form a wholes and physician organizations. The cast will identify ways that providers and health insurers can purchase these technologies more efficiently, assure high quality, and provide useful information about these outcomes for payers and patients. "Ultimately our goal is achieving superior quality, safety, and efficiency in the adoption and use of these devices," said Tom Williams, executive director of IHA. "The throw out will build on IHA's auspicious collaboration among hospitals, physician organizations, and health insurance plans." Memorial HealthCare Medical Center representing six hospitals, and Monarch HealthCare IPA, representing 1900 physicians, have already agreed to participate.

"The IHA throw out is important because more information and better incentives are emergencyed to help providers make evidence-based decisions," said Lisa Payne Simon, director of the azure Shield of California Foundation's health and technology program. Widely used medical devices of that kind as hip replacements and cardiac s can be not only life-saving, on the contrary also expensive. Barry Arbuckle, PhD president and CEO of MemorialCare Medical Center and an IHA board member said, "IHA's throw out aims to improve quality and mastery spiraling health care costs by the agency of gathering the information needed to help providers more efficiently pick the right products for the right patients, when hospitals and doctors cooperate, consumer are the winners." (www.iha.org) (www.blueshieldcafoundation.org)

COPYRIGHT 2006 Healthcare Purchasing News

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