CECity, HCI3 Forge Alliance To Connect Bridges To Excellence Programs With Quality Improvement Tools And Online Communities Via MedConcert

Partnership Leverages Cloud Platform to Facilitate Recognitions, Empower Physicians with Ways to Improve, and Expand Access through EMRs, Data Aggregators, and Registries

Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute (HCI3) and CECity.com, Inc. (CECity) recently announced a strategic alliance designed to scale and accelerate practice-based learning and performance improvement for physicians that participate in Bridges to Excellence, the nations' leading pay for performance program, using CECity's cloud-based MedConcert platform.

MedConcert is healthcare's premier multi-tenant social platform for continuous performance improvement, quality reporting, care coordination and lifelong learning.

Bridges to Excellence (BTE) programs are used by health plans, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, WellPoint, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and others to recognize and reward clinicians who deliver better patient care. Physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are able to measure the quality of care delivered to patients with certain chronic conditions and may earn financial incentives from participating health plans.

Under the Alliance, CECity and HCI3 will connect the BTE Recognition programs with a variety of quality tools, resources, and private social networks in MedConcert, all of which are designed to foster improvement in patient care, by closing gaps in performance as they are identified through the BTE programs.

"Nothing is more powerful in accelerating the transformation of health care in the U.S. than having clinicians receive and act on meaningful quality measure dashboards," said Francois de Brantes, HCI3's Executive Director. "Our Alliance with CECity will enable all clinicians who participate in any BTE program to gain better insights on the quality of care they are delivering to their patients, assess potential gaps, act on those gaps, and observe over time the impact of the practice changes they have implemented.

In addition, as the exclusive performance assessment organization for BTE, CECity will be able to streamline and scale the access to BTE Recognitions by offering all participating clinicians, as well as their EMR or other data aggregator partners, one central, user-friendly portal for reporting, benchmarking, recognition, learning and improvement.

Opportunities to align clinical quality measures in BTE with other reporting programs available through MedConcert, such as the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the EHR Incentive Program (Meaningful Use), and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) programs, will be explored in order to lower current reporting burdens on providers, and deliver additional value for participating clinicians and health systems that are engaged in quality improvement.

"Our mission is to scale and accelerate performance improvement through our innovative technologies, by connecting leaders in quality like HCI3, their participating clinicians, and health systems, with CECity's world-class content and research partners who are focused on quality improvement," said Simone Karp, RPh, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of CECity. "We are honored that MedConcert has been selected as the platform for Bridges to Excellence, and we are excited by the possibilities to improve the experience of BTE participants, and the quality of care given to their patients.

HCI3 and CECity will also collaborate to expand access and connectivity to BTE for EMRs, registries, and others technology companies interested in assisting clinicians and health systems through data aggregation and exchange services. If your organization is interested in joining the BTE program as a data aggregator, please contact CECity or visit CECity at Booth 5018 at HIMSS13.

About the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, Inc.
The Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, Inc. (HCI3) is a non-profit multi-stakeholder umbrella organization for Bridges to Excellence and PROMETHEUS Payment. The mission of the organization is to create significant improvements in the quality and affordability of health care by developing and implementing programs that recognize and reward physicians, hospitals and other health care providers that deliver safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered care. HCI3 offers a comprehensive package of solutions to employers, health plans and coalitions to improve the flawed incentives that currently permeate the U.S. health care system. For more information, visit www.hci3.org.

About CECity
Pittsburgh, PA-based CECity is the health care industry's leading platform-as-a-service provider of cloud-based applications and distribution networks for performance improvement, quality reporting, and lifelong learning. Health care professionals and healthcare organizations, including QIOs, health plans, hospitals, chain pharmacies, professional medical certifying and licensing boards, publishers, professional societies, and academic medical centers, count on CECity to power their solutions for continuous performance improvement, performance assessment, clinical registries, professional development, patient safety, medication adherence, care coordination, population health informatics, and quality reporting. CECity clients and partners are leaders in healthcare, and include the ABMS, ABIM, AMA, ACP, AAFP, AOA, FSMB, Highmark BCBS, MGMA, Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, RCPSC, Wiley, and many others.

About MedConcert
MedConcert, healthcare's first social cloud platform for continuous performance improvement and lifelong learning, provides one convenient, integrated solution to help all stakeholders answer the question, "How Do We Improve?" Through MedConcert, providers, practices, and healthcare organizations engage in building secure social networks to share best practices and connect in meaningful ways to address a variety of critical needs driven by healthcare reform. Through the MedConcert App Store, individuals and health systems access a wide variety of applications for pay for performance, performance dashboards, population health management, clinical integration, performance improvement, professional certification, patient surveys, care coordination, patient registries, enterprise-wide benchmarking, and much more.