Welcome Quality Coordinator Sara Rutherford

Sara Rutherford, Quality Coordinator

I’m Sara Rutherford and I am very excited to join EvergreenHealth Partners as Quality Coordinator and contribute to the exceptional care provided in our community.  Within EHP, I am monitoring the individual and collective performance of our providers across all of our quality initiatives, and providing support to practice managers and providers as needed.  I am your point of contact for any questions related to quality metrics, targets and strategies. I’d like to share a little about my background in healthcare, and the experience I bring to this new position with EHP.

Prior to joining EHP last October, I was a senior practice consultant helping community health centers in Washington State design reporting solutions for optimizing capitated health care contracts and quality performance incentive programs. I was also involved in constructing interventions for identifying and managing their at-risk patient populations.  Prior to that position, I spent nearly five years developing and managing the Health Information Management department for a downtown Seattle primary care practice. I earned my Master of Public Health in Health Services, Certificate in Medical Management, and Bachelor of Health Informatics and Health Information Management all from the University of Washington, and I’m credentialed as a Registered Health Information Administrator by the American Health Information Management Association.

During my first three months with EHP, I have focused on helping practice managers and providers understand their quality initiatives, establish a process for reporting quality data to EHP, and satisfy EHP's 2014 goal to report on each of their quality initiatives.  As of January 1, 2015, we can report that:

• 86% of EHP's participating providers had reported on 80% or more of their quality initiatives in 2014, achieving "green" status and earning their full incentive.  
• 3% of EHP's participating providers had reported on 50%-79% of their quality initiatives, achieving "yellow" status and earning half of their incentive.  

These results are outstanding and I look forward to reaching new heights this year!

As we transition to 2015, our goals include establishing reasonable targets for each of our quality initiatives and tracking individual provider performance against those targets.  We have also begun to prioritize specific initiatives under each of our payer contracts:

• For First Choice, we are focused on improving outcomes for populations with or at risk for diabetes and hypertension.  
• For our Collaborative Accountable Care contract with Cigna, we are prioritizing cervical cancer and breast cancer screening along with adolescent well care - three major initiatives in which we have the most opportunity to close crucial gaps in care within EHP's patient population.  

Stay tuned for upcoming communications from Debi Jefferson and me regarding our strategies for pursuing these initiatives, patient successes and ongoing performance.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at 425.899.2632 or by email at SMRutherford@evergreenhealth.com.