St. John’s recognized for improved diabetes care

The Springfield health system was one of 10 across the country that participated in the CMS-sponsored Physician Group Practice Demonstration, designed to significantly enhance the quality of care for diabetes patients during the first year of the demonstration and study whether proactively improving care also lowers costs.

St. John’s was one of two systems to receive a 100 percent quality score, meeting all 10 performance assessment benchmarks. All 10 groups improved their quality scores from the base year.

St. John’s was assigned 32,646 Medicare patients in the project and also extended its efforts to patients with other chronic illnesses, including congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease, asthma, arthritis and depression.

Officials at St. John’s point to its new Web-based patient registry, a focused electronic health record and reporting tool, which allows physicians to monitor and coordinate the care of all their patients with chronic disease.

“We knew this project was the right thing to do,” said Janet Pursley, St. John’s vice president of medical management services, in a news release. “By focusing our first-year efforts on deploying tools and care management resources to support the integration of health care, we were able to address gaps in care and achieve these notable results.”