Primary Care Information Project

NYC Health eHearts Rewards

Rewarding & Recognizing Providers for Healthy Hearts

In January 2009, The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) launched NYC Health eHearts Rewards (“eHearts ” or healthy hearts), a pilot incentive program funded by the Robin Hood Foundation.  This pilot will reward and recognize electronic health record (EHR)-enabled practices for achieving excellent heart health in patients. eHearts focuses on improving cardiovascular health to produce the greatest impact on the health of New Yorkers.  Unlike other pay-for-performance programs, eHearts will use EHR-generated clinical quality outcomes and is designed to reduce health disparities.

To study the impact of this innovative model in small practices, eHearts randomly selected eligible practices to receive quality incentives.  All practices applying for the program committed to transmit core measures in cardiovascular health from their EHRs to the DOHMH Quality Reporting System (QRS) on a monthly basis. All practices participate in evaluation activities, which includes surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

eHearts aims to advance PCIP’s mission to improve population health in disadvantaged communities through the use of health information technology.

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Quality Reports

Participants of the Health eHearts Program recently received a Quality Report with information about the health of their patients. The first page of the Quality Report summarizes a practice’s performance to date. The second page of the Report shows monthly provider and practice level percentages of patients compliant with each ABCS measure. View a sample Quality Report (PDF).

Information in the Quality Report comes directly from the PCIP Healthcare Quality Information Network (HQIN), a database that receives monthly summarized provider and practice-level quality measure data from your EHR. Providers can access their Quality Measures any time by selecting the Registry/Quality Measures tab in eClinicalWorks and refining by measure, reporting interval, and facility. Ask your PCIP QI Specialist to show you how.

PCIP invites all participating Health eHearts providers to review the data in their Quality Report for accuracy.

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Eligibility Criteria

eHearts is designed for adult primary care practices using an EHR that can transmit automated quality reports of core measures from the EHR to the QRS (examples of EHRs that are developing this functionality include eClinicalWorks, NextGen and Epic).  Practices enrolled in the program meet the following criteria:

Core Measures

All participating practices will be committing to transmit prevention-oriented quality measures based on Take Care New York, the city’s health policy agenda.  For eHearts, practices will be rewarded based on their performance in a core set of quality measures in heart health (the “ABCS”):

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Quality Incentives

The final quality payment to each practice is based on ABCS goals met (numerator) for each eligible patient seen in a 12 month measurement period (April 1, 2009 - March 31, 2010).

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Timeline and Key Dates

The pilot will last for 1 year, with a potential for expansion based on the results of this pilot.

Public Recognition

eHearts is planning various events and announcements to publicly recognize participating practices for their hard work and commitment to providing excellent heart health to patients. Examples of this public recognition include press releases highlighting program milestones, a newspaper advertisement recognizing participants, and a Letter of Recognition signed by Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, MD. More details will be shared with practices at program launch. Quality reports will NOT be shared publicly.

Read the Frequently Asked Questions on eHearts  (PDF)

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