Physician Alliance - UAB St. Vincent's

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Physician Alliance

The UAB St. Vincent’s Physician Alliance is an effort among physicians who practice at UAB St. Vincent’s to become clinically integrated. UAB St. Vincent’s consists of five acute care hospitals (UAB St. Vincent’s Birmingham, UAB St. Vincent’s Blount, UAB St. Vincent’s Chilton, UAB St. Vincent’s East, UAB St. Vincent’s St. Clair) UAB Medicine St. Vincent’s One Nineteen Health and Wellness, UAB Medicine St. Vincent’s Trussville, and 100+ outpatient sites, and a home health care company. Comprised of over 900 physicians representing over 50 specialties and subspecialties, the Physician Alliance strives to:

Improve the health and wellbeing of our community
Provide person-centered care
Control costs to create health care value
Enhance caregiver engagement and satisfaction

Health care costs have been increasing exponentially over the past three decades, currently accounting for almost 18% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. This has placed a considerable cost burden on employers and workers, strained state and federal budgets, and created an intense focus on health spending and affordability. Much of health reform is geared toward slowing these escalating cost trends. Moreover, there is wide agreement among leaders of public health that the financial incentives for providing care must be more appropriately aligned.

Clinical Integration

Physician engagement strategies using Clinical Integration (CI) have been identified as a feasible yet legal means of demonstrating better value for each health care dollar. The present fee-for-service payment system rewards “volume” over “value”. Physicians and other stakeholders tend to be paid for how much they do rather than how well they do it. On the contrary, clinical integration programs are designed to control costs and achieve the desired “value” by engaging physicians to help find ways to decrease clinical practice variation, improve preventive care, decrease wastes, increase efficiency, and create better management of chronic disease

An effective Clinical Integration program calls for physicians to develop active and ongoing clinical initiatives that are designed to control costs and improve the quality of health care services. CI programs demonstrate how independent physicians on the medical staff of the same hospital or hospital system can join together in an organization that allows them to: (1) identify and adopt clinical protocols for the treatment of particular disease states, (2) develop systems to monitor compliance with the adopted protocols on both an inpatient and outpatient basis, (3) collaborate with a hospital or hospital system to encourage compliance with inpatient performance improvement processes and protocols, and consequently (4) enter into physician-directed “pay-for-performance” and other contractual arrangements with health plans in a way that financially recognizes the physicians’ efforts to improve health care quality and efficiency.

History

UAB St. Vincent’s has had a Physician-Hospital Organization (PHO) since the mid-1980s. However, over the past 15 years, it had been largely dormant. The PHO was called Preferred Care, Inc., and was established to deal with the managed care risk contracts and capitation of the day. Upon the advice of consultants, it was decided that this existing PHO structure logically should be the backbone of the new endeavor.

A new Steering Committee of enthusiastic physicians was formed in February 2011. This group met monthly to transition the PHO into a more contemporary alignment strategy. The resulting endeavor was renamed the Physician Alliance, and the decision was made to forge ahead with the development of a Clinical Integration program. A new Operating Agreement was drafted and by January 2013, all physician members joined by signing new Provider Agreements.

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Contact Us

1130 22nd Street South
Suite 1000
Birmingham, AL 35205

Program Coordinator
Lynette Clark: 205-930-2900

Vice President, Quality and Population Health
Randy L. Granata, DNP: 205-930-2900

Executive Director of the UAB St. Vincent’s Physician Alliance
Dr. Jerry Kitchens: 205-930-2900

Director of Population Health
Trevor Waldo: 205-470-8989

Employer Solutions

Director of Employer Solutions
Kim Starling: 205-807-4977

Account Executive
Tommy Cannon: 205-305-4375