Dr. Linda Good and her staff at Mt. Airy Family Practice, a patient-centered medical home, provide high-quality coordinated care to help patients like Morris Johnson manage their chronic illness, stay well, and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.

Practicing medicine with a patient-centered team is satisfying, effective, and highly personalized. With health coaches trained to support and encourage our patients, and a care management nurse on our staff, we are able to emphasize preventive health and proactive management of chronic illnesses to meet our primary goal: keeping patients like Morris well.
— Linda Good, M.D., Mt. Airy Family Practice, Philadelphia, Pa.

In 2008, we announced our intention to improve the quality of patient care and reduce costs in our region by introducing the patient-centered medical home, a nationally recognized model that focuses on a team approach to well-coordinated primary care. Practices that follow this model promote preventive care, manage chronic illnesses more effectively, offer rewards for good outcomes, and reduce costs by avoiding complications. By 2010, we had 32 such practices successfully up and running. In 2011, that number grew 515 percent to 198 practices in the Philadelphia five-county region. These practices account for 6 percent of all patient-centered medical homes nationally — the largest concentration of recognized patient-centered medical home practices in the nation.

With this solid foundation in place, we are now focusing on our next goal — integrating primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals in our region so that all levels of health care are equally well-informed about a patient's needs and equally accountable for healthy results. Through our Integrated Provider Performance Incentive Plan (IPPIP), we have created a strong performance-based incentive program that motivates doctors and hospitals to work together to make decisions that put patients' needs first and keep costs down.

"It's about putting our members first," says Dr. Richard L. Snyder, chief medical officer at Independence Blue Cross. "We are creating a system that delivers the right care at the right time."

When physicians prescribe medicine or order tests and screenings, they hope their patients are complying with their recommendations. But until now, they had no simple way of making sure. The Clinical Care Report is a confidential, comprehensive electronic snapshot of a patient's health, designed to allow physicians access to valuable information that streamlines medical decision making and helps avoid redundant care, which can be unsafe and costly.

In 2011, we took our dedication to the health of our region a big step further with the creation of our $42 million Independence Blue Cross Foundation, a private charitable organization whose goal is to transform health care in the communities we serve through funding in four main areas: caring for our most vulnerable, enhancing health care delivery, leading innovation in health care, and building healthy communities.

Through the foundation's Blue Safety Net, 145,000 uninsured and underinsured residents are receiving the much-needed care they deserve at 34 clinics in the Philadelphia five-county region. These clinics provide routine primary care and valuable preventive care, dental care, and medication, as well as a range of specialty services, screenings, and health education sessions.

An Independence Blue Cross Foundation Innovation Grant is funding the wellness center at Pan American Academy Charter School in Philadelphia, Pa.

Nurses for Tomorrow is the IBC Foundation's multifaceted plan to prepare the health care workforce of the future, addressing our national and regional shortage of nurses and nurse educators and ensuring that they are specially trained to care for the elderly, especially as baby boomers age and need more care. The foundation will also provide fellowships for much-needed teachers to educate these nurses.

The IBC Foundation's Innovation Grants will reward fresh ideas for identifying critical health issues, creating novel solutions, and implementing them effectively, such as the school wellness clinic featured on the facing page. And the foundation will build healthy communities by funding programs that address the needs of unique populations, such as the homeless and children, in our region.