Electronic Health Records

July 26, 2007

New Report Shows Kaiser Permanente's Increased Use of IT Improves Quality of Care

The more that California physician groups use information technology to support patient management and care, the better they score on average on a range of important clinical quality measures, according to the Integrated Healthcare Association, which this week released Pay for Performance program results for 2006.

IHA reported that California physician groups participating in the program, including Kaiser Permanente, continued to improve across all three areas of performance measurement: clinical quality, patient experience, and use of information technology.

For example, breast cancer screening for patients ages 52 to 69 improved from 64.4 percent screened in 2003 to 70 percent in 2006 without Kaiser Permanente results, or 71.9 percent with KP's results, according to a clinical breakdown on the association's website.

"Insurers are moving towards compensating providers for outcomes delivered," said Louise Liang, MD, Kaiser Permanente's senior vice president for Quality and Clinical Systems Support. "Indirectly, that supports the use of electronic medical records because some benchmarks are only achievable by an electronic medical record."

For more, read the story in the San Francisco Business Times.