Business Health Coalition Releases Report on Outpatient Care

The St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition has released Volume 2 of the 2014 St. Louis Health Care Industry Overview, which is focused on outpatient care.

A few highlights from Volume 2:

• The number of St. Louis area primary care providers with National Committee for Quality Assurance Patient-Centered Medical Home Recognition (NCQA PCMH) more than doubled from 2012 to 2014. Health plans are starting to base financial incentives in part on PCMH recognition.

• Federally qualified health centers are also NCQA PCMH-recognized providers and make up part of the primary care provider network for low-income uninsured adults in the CMS-funded “Gateway to Better Health” program.

• While dialysis centers did a better job of keeping patients out of the hospital, more centers’ infection rates were above the national average as compared to the previous year with a larger proportion reporting both vascular catheter and septicemia infections.

• Quality standards say “double” CT scans are rarely necessary. Yet in St. Louis, nearly 75% of hospitals performed double scans of the abdomen on more than 5% of Medicare patients in 2012 as compared to 68% nationally.