Health Partners Total Cost of Care Model

Health Partners is a fully integrated health system which includes a 1.2 million member health plan, a large multi-specialty physician group and several hospitals. For the last two years they have been measuring physician group performance in what they call “taking the triple aim to the next level."

Health Partners leaders have developed a model which they have posted on the Health Partners website- http://www.healthpartners.com/public/tcoc/ which involves comparing physician groups on cost and quality. The quality data is developed from the Minnesota Community Measurement public reports and the cost data comes from Health Partners health plan. They use an ambulatory care grouper(ACG) methodology developed at HP to compare risk adjusted performance by individual physician group. The NQF has endorsed this approach.

Another unique feature is that actual contract prices are part of the total cost of care analysis. Physician groups receive reports on multiple acgs as do the public and can compare across many acgs both cost and quality outcomes.

This methodology appears to be breakthrough in comparing apples to apples physician performance data in a way that can help providers focus on the biggest areas for improvement hats off to health partners.

Read more in the accompanying summary -Total cost of care.5