PacifiCare’s Vaccaro Changes Titles; Admar Renews in Santa Ana
The concept of “quality” in health plans has been roundly debated by managed care advocates and critics alike. Backers say quality is a measurable concept, while detractors contend it is nothing but a marketing buzzword.
In the meantime, some organizations are working to actually gauge health plan quality with measurable data.
They include the Washington, D.C.-based National Committee for Quality Assurance, which recently put out its annual report on how managed care plans are doing, including Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.
The committee’s report, released about a week ago, found that plans that reported data achieved gains in areas of care and service measured. Among other things, the committee noted that the average rate of patients who received cholesterol screening after a heart attack or other cardiovascular event rose from 69% in 1999 to 74% in 2000.
Retinal exams for diabetes also showed improvement, going from 45% in 1999 to 48% in 2000. Retinal examinations can lead to better management of diabetes, thus preventing complications such as blindness and amputations.
Additionally, the committee said that it is going to release an economic-model study intended to allow employers to “calculate the financial benefits of selecting high-quality vs. low-quality healthcare.”
The study noted that based on improvements in seven governmental measures in the past several years, U.S. employers “will enjoy an annual productivity dividend of 8 million sick days avoided and $1.4 billion in improved productivity and avoided sick wages saved this year.”
Besides cholesterol screening and diabetic retinal examinations, other measurements included breast cancer screening, advising smokers to quit, controlling high blood pressure, timeliness of prenatal care, getting care quickly and getting needed care.
“For two years, we’ve seen that participating health plans are getting better (but) the rest of healthcare is still a real question mark,” said Margaret O’Kane, the committee’s president, in a release. “Further improvement is going to depend on collaboration and measurement at all levels of the healthcare system.”
The report examined 372 health plan products covering more than 63 million Americans.
PacifiCare’s Vaccaro Adds Duties
Dr. Jerome Vaccaro, chief executive of PacifiCare Behavioral Health, is the new vice president of PacifiCare Specialty Health Businesses, Laguna Hills. PacifiCare Specialty Health Businesses is a new subsidiary encompassing the company’s behavioral health and dental and vision units. The companies remain standalone entities with a common senior vice president heading them.
Vaccaro joined PacifiCare Behavioral Health in 1996 as its medical director and worked his way up the ranks, becoming the behavioral unit’s chief executive in February of this year.
James Stumpfel, previously PacifiCare Dental and Vision’s president, has left the company to pursue other opportunities.
Vaccaro was director of community psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles before coming to PacifiCare and continues to serve as an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from City University of New York, Brooklyn College, and a medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Admar Staying in Santa Ana
The Admar Group, which develops, markets and administers products that help manage healthcare costs, renewed its lease of space in the Bentall Executive Centre in Santa Ana.
Admar’s lease, which is valued at $4.8 million according to real estate sources, keeps the company in its 38,970 square feet of second- and third-floor space for the next five years.
Admar has been in the Bentall building, which has 10 stories and a total of 196,461 square feet of space, for more than 10 years. Tom Taylor, Greg Farrier, David Giglio and Lori Smith of Grubb & Ellis represented Admar, while John Gillespie of Newport Commercial Realty Advisors represented Bentall Real Estate Services of Canada, the landlord.
Bits and Pieces:
California Assembly Bill 1194, by Assemblyman Lou Correa, D-Anaheim, now is law. It clarifies that a nurse practitioner or physician assistant can see an injured employee on the first visit in an occupational health context PacifiCare Foundation, Santa Ana, doled out nearly $690,000 in grants to 121 charitable organizations in eight western states and Guam. The PacifiCare Foundation is the philanthropic arm of PacifiCare Health Systems. OC grantees included the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Orange County, Orange, with $100,000. A brief in the Aug. 27-Sept. 3 issue should have said that new dental plans offered by PacifiCare would have higher benefit levels, not premiums.
