FMA's Client Reduces Back Pain Injection Costs by $335,000 Annually

Health Plan with 88,000 members uses FMA's Blueprint C|Q™ to cut cost and improve quality

In a recent project, FMA identified Back pain as one of the areas high in variation for Partnership HealhPlan of California (PHC).  Because back pain is a high volume, high cost condition for the PHC, they decided to make chronic and acute back pain their top priority.  FMA provided PHC with detailed reports outlining which services caused the variation and how the variation was driving cost.

Working closely with FMA, PHC developed an outreach program that engaged physicians as partners in reaching the following goals:

• Improve care for patients with acute and chronic back pain
• Decrease underuse, overuse, and misuse of related services
• Focus on significant opportunities to improve efficiency and quality of care. 
  

By using clinically significant data and a non-judgemental physician engagement approach, PHC succeeded in implementing new guidelines and measures that resulted in an annual estimated savings of $335,000 in back pain injections alone.