BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) announced today that Massachusetts primary care physicians continue to provide high-quality care overall, though notable differences in the quality of care delivered by medical groups in Massachusetts remain, according to MHQP’s annual Quality Insights: Clinical Quality in Primary Care report available at mhqp.org.
This year’s Quality Insights report shows both adult and pediatric primary care providers, including family practice clinicians, continue to perform well, often better than the national average across most of the care services measured.
According to MHQP’s data, which has tracked the quality of care provided by medical groups for the past eight years, pediatric care providers are among Massachusetts’ best-performing primary care providers. Year after year they continue to improve the care they provide children and families. Massachusetts pediatricians scored above the national 90th percentile for the appropriate testing of children for strep throat before prescribing antibiotics. In the past year, the scores for this measure of care have improved more than 3 percentage points statewide—from 90 percent to 93 percent.
But not all health care in Massachusetts is the same. There is high variation in how pediatricians across the state perform. For the same strep throat measure, some pediatricians gave the recommended care 100 percent of the time, while others did so only 60 percent of the time. A variation of 40 percentage points shows the differences in care a child could receive depending on where they go for care.
“People in Massachusetts are facing decisions about choosing where they go for care within tiered and limited networks,” said Barbra Rabson, executive director of MHQP. “Reliable quality information is important to help individuals and families make more confident decisions about where to get their care.”
MHQP’s Quality Insights report shows that Massachusetts’ medical groups serving both children and adults provide high-quality care on many measures, and that care continues to improve. In the eight years that MHQP has measured quality for medical groups, every measure has seen improvement. But care is not the same throughout the state, or even within a single region of Massachusetts.
On www.mhqp.org, patients can review information about the performance of their local medical groups on a range of medical conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma care, pediatric care, and antidepressant medication management among others. MHQP’s Quality Insights in Primary Care report provides detailed information about the performance of medical groups across the state.
Key findings include:
Overall, Massachusetts’ primary care physicians provide high-quality care.
On four out of seven pediatric measures—testing for strep throat, treatment for upper respiratory infections, medication use for pediatric asthma, and well-child visits for the first 15 months of life—some medical groups in Massachusetts reached the highest score of 100 percent.
On every measure, Massachusetts medical groups have improved over the eight years MHQP has been reporting.
Some statewide measures have increased significantly since MHQP started reporting.
- Over five years, control of bad cholesterol for people with diabetes improved by 9 percent; control of bad cholesterol for people with heart disease improved by 10 percent. At the same time screening for these conditions has also improved.
- For children with upper respiratory infections, appropriate treatment has improved by 5 points while the variation between medical groups has gone down 9 points over the last five years.
Quality varies among medical groups across Massachusetts.
Across all regions of the state, it matters where a patient goes to get care. While MHQP’s report shows very little variation in care across the six Massachusetts regions (Western MA, Central MA, Metro West, Greater Boston, Northeastern MA and Southeastern MA), the care among medical groups within a given region can vary greatly.
Most measures show wide variation among medical groups, underscoring there is still room for continued improvement.
Of the 24 process measures that MHQP tracks and publicly reports, 12 measures showed variations of 40 percentage points or more between the highest and lowest performing medical groups.
- When measuring whether an imaging study was used appropriately to diagnose lower back pain, the state rate was 78 percent. However there was a variation of 40 percentage points between the lowest (51%) and the highest (91%) rates.
- The percent of adolescents getting well care visits varied by 50 percentage points across the state. MHQP’s data can show which medical groups are providing the most consistent care.
Doctors use MHQP’s reports to find out where they need to improve.
Physicians use MHQP’s resources to see where the care they provide can be improved.
- For testing children for strep throat, scores improved by more than 3 percent and the variation gap decreased by 23 percentage points from the previous report period—from 63 percentage points to 40 percentage points.
- Colorectal cancer screening rates have improved by 9 percentage points over the last four years (from 69% to 78%).
Dr. Gregory Young, president of Pediatric Physicians’ Organization at Children’s Hospital Boston and co-chair of the Massachusetts Child Health Quality Coalition sums up how quality information helps families and health care providers partner together to improve pediatric care. “As families become increasingly aware of cost, they need to be equally conscious of the quality of care,” said Dr. Young. “MHQP gives the public a window into health care quality, and our collective challenge is to continue working together to develop even more and better measures for the future.”
The new report summarizes care delivered by approximately 150 medical groups in Massachusetts, representing more than 4,000 primary care practitioners. Medical groups are organizations that employ or contract with doctors, nurses, therapists, and others who treat and care for patients. Medical groups vary in size. Some groups are small, with just three or more doctors in one office; others are large, with many doctors' offices forming a medical group.
All regions of the state are represented. MHQP gathered data provided by five commercial Massachusetts health plans: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Fallon Community Health Plan, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Health New England, and Tufts Health Plan. The performance data are compiled from HEDIS®, a set of performance measures developed and maintained by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The HEDIS® data are collected largely through insurance claims for medical office visits and procedures.
This effort contributes to MHQP’s participation in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality program, a national initiative in targeted communities across the country to improve the quality of health and health care through performance measurement and public reporting, among other efforts.
For more information, including access to the report, visit www.mhqp.org.
Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) is a non-profit, broad-based coalition established in 1995 that provides reliable information to help physicians improve the quality of care they provide their patients and help consumers take an active role in making informed decisions about their health care. MHQP’s mission is to drive measureable improvements in health care quality, patients’ experiences of care, and use of resources in Massachusetts through patient and public engagement and broad-based collaboration among health care stakeholders, including physicians, hospitals, health plans, purchasers, patient and public advocates, government agencies, and academics.