News

Cisco, Intel and Oracle to Promote IT Use in the Health Sector

January 31, 2006

Cisco Systems Inc. Intel Corp. and Oracle Corp are encouraging the medical groups in Northern California to use the knowledge of IT in sharing data and improving patient care.

Cisco, Intel and Oracle have made a conglomerate to encourage the use of electronic health records and the other IT clinical systems. The Silicon Valley Pay for Performance Consortium includes various medical groups like Camino Medical Group Inc. Kaiser Permanente, Palo Alto Medical clinic etc. This conglomerate includes even such medical groups that treat the employees of Intel, Cisco and Oracle.

One of the first initiatives the consortium plans to launch is a “pay for performance” program that rewards physicians who use systematic processes and health IT to improve quality of care. The program will use standards unveiled today by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), a nonprofit organization whose goal is to improve health care quality.

The IT vendors initially plan to reward participants based on measurements in three categories: evidence-based care, care management and patient education. The vendors targeted the participating medical groups because they treat many of their own employees in Northern California .