UTICA — Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake is one of 36 upstate New York hospitals and health centers that last year earned $29.3 million in quality improvement payments from Excellus BlueCross BlueShield as part of the nonprofit health insurer’s Hospital Performance Incentive Program.

Eight hospitals in the Utica-Rome-North Country region participated in this program in 2019, sharing $1 million in quality improvement incentive payments. Participating hospitals included Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, Oneida Health Hospital in Oneida, Rome Memorial Hospital in Rome, Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown and St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica.

Areas targeted for 2019 improvement include the following:

¯ Clinical processes of care — Focused on improvements in follow-up after hospitalization, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), surgical care and other measures unique to each participating hospital.

¯ Patient safety — Centered on reductions in hospital-acquired infections, readmissions and other adverse events or errors that affect patient care.

¯ Patient satisfaction — Used the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, which is a national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives of hospital care.

In addition to meeting required clinical and patient safety measures in 2019, other nationally endorsed measures and target outcomes were jointly agreed upon by each hospital and the health insurer using benchmarks established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and others.

Since 2005, Excellus BCBS’s program has paid out more than $311 million in quality improvement incentives.

When we launched this initiative several years ago, we knew that its success would hinge on a high level of cooperation and collaboration among our health plan and our hospital partners,” said Carrie Whitcher, vice president for care improvement at Excellus BCBS.

“In 2019, Excellus BCBS’s Hospital Performance Incentive Program evaluated participating hospitals on 38 unique performance measures,” said Dr. Stephen Cohen, senior vice president and corporate medical director at Excellus BCBS. “The best evidence that this collaboration is a success is that our hospital partners met 96% of all quality improvement targets.”