WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Advisory Board Company's Southwind program announced on Monday that it has recognized three top-performing health care provider organizations with national awards for successful physician alignment.

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Southwind presented the following awards:

"When hospitals, health systems, and other providers begin making the transformation from volume-based to value-based care, no factor plays a more critical role in their success than the ability to align closely with physicians on cost and quality performance," said John Deane, CEO, Southwind, The Advisory Board Company's health care management and consulting services program. "These three organizations are national leaders in executing key initiatives for an accountable care strategy: improving performance, raising quality, and reducing costs."

Southwind Physician Alignment Award in Clinical Integration: Dignity HealthIn CI programs, a network of independent physicians collectively commits to collaborate with a hospital or health system to deliver improvements in quality and cost of care. Dignity Health, headquartered in San Francisco, is one of the nation's five largest health care systems in the nation with 11,000 physicians across Arizona, California, and Nevada. Dignity Health sought a model of care that would leverage local affiliations and foster physician leadership in each market, but would also align physicians with the system's overarching strategy to become regional, integrated care delivery systems.

Working with Southwind, Dignity Health developed an executive strategy to foster and support local, physician-led efforts for CI programs. Today, more than 2,300 physicians across the Dignity Health system participate in a local CI program.

Dignity Health has CI program development under way in six of nine service areas, with the other three on pace to have CI within 12 to 18 months. Three of the CI programs have made informal introductions to the Federal Trade Commission.

"Working with physicians to build clinically integrated networks is an important part of our commitment to modernizing the U.S. health care system," said Bruce Swartz, Senior Vice President of Physician Integration at Dignity Health. "We are honored by this recognition for our efforts and we look forward to continuing our progress to make care more efficient and easier to navigate for both patients and physicians."

Southwind Physician Alignment Award in Clinical Transformation: Adirondack Region Medical Home PilotClinical Transformation refers to a change in hospital-physician partnerships to support value-based care. The Adirondack Region Medical Home Pilot is a collaboration between Community Providers, Inc. comprised of CVPH (Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital) Medical Center and Elizabethtown Community Hospital and Adirondack Health and Hudson Headwaters Health Network. Together, these organizations worked with Southwind to help transform health care delivery across a region twice the size of Rhode Island by implementing an advanced primary care model.

In partnership with the State of New York, the partner organizations formed a commissioned regional medical home pilot for 49 NCQA Level III-recognized patient centered medical homes and established the Adirondack Health Institute (AHI) as the managing entity of the pilot. The effort has drawn participation from all providers across the community: five hospital systems, 33 primary care practices, and 225 primary care providers.

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Three Health Care Organizations Honored for Successful Hospital-Physician Alignment