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Paying Doctors for Performance More Common in OC

Offering financial rewards to doctors to boost patient care is more common in Orange County, according to a study from the Center for Studying Health System Change.

OC is one of 12 communities that the center, a nonprofit financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, looks at in examining healthcare trends.

Pay for performance differs from most healthcare payment systems, which typically give doctors the same amount of money regardless of the quality of care they provide to patients.

“Orange County and Boston are out front in part because physicians in both communities in large medical groups, health systems or independent practice associations have the resources to manage care systematically and track physician performance,” said Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, the study’s co-author, in a release.

Performance pay might be hard to put into markets like Miami, which are dominated by small group practices, Bodenheimer said. One out of three American doctors still practice on their own or in small groups, he said.

At the end of 2004, major California health plans paid doctors’ groups some $40 million in performance bonuses for demonstrating gains in clinical categories, patient satisfaction and developing information technology, the report said.

The three largest doctor groups in OC, which weren’t identified, had some individual doctors who received bonuses of up to $10,000, it said.

“Medical directors are more enthusiastic about (pay for performance) than frontline physicians, who become more interested when they see real dollars at stake,” the report said.

“Overall, Orange County shows that to gain physician acceptance, the first P (pay) is the key to success,” the authors said.

Doctors still have concerns about performance pay, including the addition of quality measures by some plans that are above and beyond standard quality measures by the Integrated Healthcare Association, adding to the reporting burden.


UCI: Prostate Research Cash

The University of California, Irvine School of Medicine recently received a $9.5 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop a genetic-based method to predict the outcome of prostate cancer, the most common malignancy among American men.

The grant is one of the 10 largest research grants in the university’s 40-year history, according to UC Irvine.

Dan Mercola, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, is set to lead the research with other schools using the grant. The goal is to develop a “gene signature” of prostate cancer for newly diagnosed patients based on a tumor biopsy or blood examination.

The signature will let know if they have an aggressive form of cancer, which will allow them to better understand their disease and make decisions for appropriate early treatment.

The project calls for a prospective clinical trial at UCI.


Contract Device Maker Grows

The Hi-Tech Group, a group of three contract manufacturing companies that has a corporate office in Anaheim, opened a 55,000-square-foot plant in Riverside.

The facility, which bears the HTG-A.C. Hoffman Engineering name, is capable of prototyping and high-volume molding of precision medical device components, according to Hi-Tech.

Hi-Tech, which employs some 650 workers and also has an operation in Fontana, said it was planning to expand rubber and plastic contract production within the next two years.

Hi-Tech was created last June, when Anaheim-based Hi-Tech Rubber Inc., Riverside-based A.C. Hoffman Engineering and Inland Technologies Inc., which is in Fontana, formed a “strategic alliance.” The three have common ownership.

Red Diamond Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and Century Park Capital Partners of Los Angeles acquired Hi-Tech Rubber in 2004 and Inland in April. Hi-Tech bought Hoffman in 2004.


Bits and Pieces:

France’s CoreValve SA, which has American operations in Irvine, said that it started its first North American clinical trial using its ReValving procedure to replace the diseased aortic heart valve of a 64-year-old woman who wasn’t eligible for open-heart surgery Dallas Salisbury, chief executive of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, presents “National Health Care Update” at the Jan. 19 meeting of the Orange County Employee Benefit Council. The meeting is at the Beckman Center at UCI. Information: (714) 593-0873 The “Teeth in an Hour” dental implant system by Nobel Biocare USA Inc., Yorba Linda, was featured during a segment on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Thomas Balshi, Glenn Wolfinger and John Thaler, three dental surgeons from Fort Washington, Pa., performed a surgery on the show Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Irvine, discussed its “orphan drug” strategy for its Ampakine compound during its shareholder meeting last month. Orphan drugs are medications used to treat diseases and conditions that rarely occur. During the discussion, Roger Stoll, Cortex’s chief executive, said using Ampakine for orphan indications could allow small companies such as Cortex to get products to market faster.

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