Henry Ford Physician Network Focuses on Rapid Performance Improvement

Earlier this year, the Henry Ford Physician Network (HFPN) adopted the Choosing Wisely campaign to address overuse and improve the care it delivers to its patients as one of its top strategies to achieve the triple aim. Launched in 2010, the HFPN is a physician-led subsidiary of Henry Ford Health System and includes just under 1,800 physicians, many of them part of the Henry Ford Medical Group.

HFPN’s campaign calls on its physicians to integrate one of the specialty society’s Choosing Wisely recommendations into their practice in 2014. Working individually, as a group or as a full department, participants develop and implement an improvement plan for their recommendation. At the conclusion of the project, results will be compared to baseline data and learnings will be shared across the network.

While participation in the campaign is voluntary, HFPN has linked it directly to financial incentives physicians can receive. HFPN structured its incentive program to encourage physicians to improve performance in three categories: satisfaction, network quality and efficiency, and engagement. Out of 100 available points, active participation in their Choosing Wisely-inspired campaign (i.e., development and implementation of an improvement plan) is worth 60.

“We turned what was already a good idea [with Choosing Wisely] into an incentive-linked engagement metric for the network,” said Charles E. Kelly, DO, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Henry Ford Physician Network. “You don’t necessarily have to succeed, you just have to get involved in the process.”

In early 2014, to encourage participation in the campaign, HFPN began promotions through its newsletters and “News Flash” e-mails for all staff. It also became a regular agenda item at governance and leadership meetings. Early indicators show that the campaign is succeeding, as the majority of medical groups within the network have signed on including primary care, pediatrics, pulmonology, cardiology, allergy, neurology, rheumatology, surgery, orthopaedics and anesthesia.

“I have several specialties that have chosen three recommendations – even though they only need one,” said Dr. Kelly. “But once they read the recommendations and understood how wasteful some of their practices are, they said they felt incomplete in their engagement if they only looked at one when they could clearly see there were several. They wanted no part of continuing a wasteful practice even though there was no additional incentive for performing in multiple areas of waste.”

Participants will showcase their results at a poster session at the HFPN Summit in October and judges will recognize the top three projects based on their outcomes. Based on the feedback from this year’s campaign, HFPN plans to continue it next year and increase the level of commitment needed to achieve the incentives.