SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Brown & Toland Physicians, one of the Bay Area’s leading physician groups, was honored this week with a “Better Way to Care” award by SCAN Health Plan and the UCLA Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. The award was presented at the SCAN-UCLA Best Practices Summit, which brought together physician groups from across the state to share best practices in two main areas: multiple chronic disease management and end-of-life care.
Brown & Toland, whose 1,500 doctors care for more than 300,000 HMO and PPO patients in the Bay Area, was recognized for its population health management program aimed at reaching Medicare patients at high risk for hospitalization. To identify these individuals, Brown & Toland uses a combination of sophisticated medical analytic tools coupled with direct input from its provider network. “The most important partner in this program and the key to really having an impact is our physicians,” said Marcus Zachary, MD, senior medical director for quality and population health for Brown & Toland.
Once identified, Brown & Toland connects patients with individual care managers who closely monitor the patients’ health and coordinate care across the full continuum of services. In the first year of full implementation, inpatient utilization rates dropped by 25 percent, resulting in better health, better patient satisfaction, and a cost savings of almost $11 million.
Brown & Toland’s program was one of five best practices presented at the summit, which was attended by 11 of California’s largest physician groups. After the presentations attendees from the medical groups had the opportunity to work directly with gerontology experts from UCLA and SCAN, as well as the presenters themselves, to develop action plans that will allow them to implement these best practices within their own organizations. Clinical and operational mentoring will continue over the next six months as the groups work to implement these new programs to better serve their patients.
“The Best Practices Summit was designed to look at outstanding programs that enrich the patient experience, improve health outcomes, and reduce the cost of care,” said Dan Osterweil, MD, FACP, vice president, medical director for SCAN Health Plan. “The program presented by Brown & Toland was an exceptional example of this as it compassionately addresses seniors’ needs and concerns at the most sensitive and critical times of their life. In doing so the program creates a model of care that we encourage other organizations to adopt so their patients can recognize these benefits as well.”
SCAN Health Plan is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug plans currently serving 170,000 members in California and Arizona. Further information may be obtained at scanhealthplan.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/scanhealthplan.
Since its inception in 1979, the UCLA Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (MPGMG) has been recognized as a national leader in providing clinical care for older persons, teaching physicians and other health professionals how to better care for older persons, and conducting research aimed at improving the health and independence of older persons. With over 65 full-time faculty members representing many disciplines, the UCLA MPGMG is one of the largest academic geriatrics programs in the world. http://www.geronet.ucla.edu/
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