ACN Advance: Provider Newsletter

As 2021 comes to a close and we look forward to the New Year, I want to give thanks to all of you: providers, clinical and administrative staff, everyone.

Thanks for not only what you’ve achieved with your practice and patient care during another challenging year, but also for what lies ahead.

And there is a lot coming:

• • It’s through your success and engagement caring for your patients and collaborating with fellow providers that we celebrate entering our 10th year of operations, and further evolve our Medicare ACO as we embark on CMS’s new Global and Professional Direct Contracting Model (GPDCM)
  • It’s your participation and dedication that paved an opportunity to foster new partnerships with Alignment Healthcare, Medica, and Employers Health Network (EHN), expanding our footprint to more than 350,000 members in Maricopa and Pima counties.
  • It’s your commitment to quality patient care and coordinating care within our network of specialists and contracted facilities that allows ACN to meaningfully increase the Provider Rewards Program quarterly incentives for 2022 (keep reading this newsletter to learn more).
  • It’s your support and feedback that inspired us to improve our support of specialist practices through eight available Neighborhood Referral Maps (to be updated quarterly), and improve the actionable data in our specialist quarterly reports.

It’s why supporting your success is the most important work we do — and the most satisfying.

As this year gives way to 2022, I hope that you have opportunities to enjoy time with your family and friends. On behalf of your Board of Managers and executive leadership team, we wish you a wonderful holiday season.

Todd Ricotta
CEO

Our healthcare community is mourning the loss of Jonathan Hackenyos, DO, who passed away Dec. 13.

He co-founded Ocotillo Internal Medicine Associates in Chandler with his partner, Dr. Cheryl Maurice, in 2004, and has participated with Arizona Care Network since ACN’s inception in 2013. Dr. Hackenyos built an exceptional medical practice that has thrived for nearly 20 years, and the providers and staff at Ocotillo Internal Medicine remain committed to providing patients with the level of care he established and sustained over the years.

From 2015 through 2020, Dr. Hackenyos served in several governance roles with ACN, including 4 years as chair of the Network Development Committee (2015-2018). During this time he also served on the Board of Managers, including being elected Vice Chair in 2017.

He transitioned to Board Chair in January 2019, serving in the capacity until illness led him to resign from the Board in July 2020.

A native of Pennsylvania, Dr. Hackenyos moved to the Valley in the early 2000s, where he began his post-education career at St. Joseph’s Hospital. In subsequent years, he served as a teacher and mentor with a variety of higher education institutions around the Valley, including St. Joseph’s, A.T. Still University, Mercy Adult Health Center, and Midwestern Medical College. He also served as Major and a physician with the Arizona Air National Guard’s 161st ARW.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

On behalf of the Board of Managers and Executive Leadership Team, all of ACN sends its thoughts and condolences to the Hackenyos family, and to the providers and staff at Ocotillo Internal Medicine.

More financial incentive opportunities are coming to the Provider Rewards Program in 2022 to reward eligible primary care practices for improvements in quality and coordinating care with ACN specialists.

Thanks to your feedback, ACN’s physician-led Board of Managers approved several alterations to the program that significantly increase the available incentive pool for 2022.

Approved updates include:

• Increased quarterly incentives
  • • A new, dedicated quarterly incentive pool for improved in-network care coordination with specialists and facilities:

• • • Visit-based incentives for Medicare & Medicaid members to increase alignment with value-based agreements and increase performance in quality measure
      • Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (AWV) increase to between $100-$150
      • Mercy Care Well Child Visits increase to $50 (2 visits between 0-30 months) or $100 (1 annual visit from ages 3-21 years old)
• Opportunities for providers to earn larger Annual Shared Savings Bonuses
  • • Practices qualify for an additional bonus pool if performance improvement for the practice on certain quality metrics exceeds 5 percent compared to its own baseline.
    • Four (4) Quality metrics are considered for greater network opportunity to achieve shared savings in multiple value-based agreements:

• Continuation of full participation bonus
  • • 10 percent of any earned Annual Shared Savings Bonuses to be distributed exclusively to the primary care practices that are participating in all ACN programs that the PCP is contracted with, as of Q1 2022

A confidential, printable overview of the 2022 PRP changes is available from your Clinical Performance Consultant.

Please contact your CPC or email practicetransformation@azcarenetwork.org with any questions or feedback you may have about the PRP updates for 2022.

As Arizona Care Network begins new payer partnerships on Jan. 1, 2022, a series of valuable webinars for office staff and practice managers took place in the fall.

These recorded webinars contained an overview of each payer and its plan’s respective member benefits, along with important documentation regarding eligibility, provider portal, claims, referral, and other information. Providers and staff also asked valuable questions during and after each webinar.

You may watch these webinars anytime at your convenience by clicking on the link(s) below. You may also bookmark these for future reference.

Alignment Healthcare (Medicare Advantage):   Nov. 3        Nov. 9

Medica (Pinnacle IFP):  WebEx   Password: mHp2Mr3$       Q&A

FEE SCHEDULES DELIVERED

Additionally, fee schedules for each respective payer/plan were distributed at the TIN level via mail in December.

Please contact your Clinical Performance Consultant or email practicetransformation@azcarenetwork.org if your practice/TIN did not receive the appropriate fee schedule(s) or with any questions about these new partnerships.

The physicians who will serve on the Arizona Care Network Board of Managers in 2022 was finalized during December’s Board of Managers meeting.

Four physicians were re-elected to three-year terms, beginning in January:

• • Robert Babyar, MD (Adelante Healthcare)
  • Pankaj Jain, MD (Arizona Urology)
  • Monte Swarup, MD (Women’s Health Arizona)
  • Kevin Theodorou, MD (Internal Medicine of the Valley) (also elected as Vice Chair)

Additionally, M. Randy Keller, MD (Integrated Medical Services) was newly elected to the Board for a three-year term.

To further support your patient care and improve population health, Arizona Care Network is aligning our value-based contract quality measures with various focuses throughout 2022. This supports the network in putting our performance in a favorable position for potential increased shared savings.

ACN’s Quality Data Abstractors (QDA), Clinical Performance Consultants (CPC), and Care Coordination teams will assist through multiple touch points to help your practice identify members with specific care gaps and facilitate your patient’s visit with you.

Quality focuses include:

• • Hypertension (HTN)
  • Diabetes
  • Well Child Visits
  • Pain management
  • Prevention

View the 2022 outline and Quality focuses

Watch for additional content and shareable resources via Bulletin email communications, this newsletter, and our Resources blog that emphasizes a particular quality measure each month.

Please contact your Clinical Performance Consultant or email practicetransformation@azcarenetwork.org with any questions or feedback.

As we communicated earlier this year, ACN’s agreement with Bright HealthCare will end on Dec. 31, 2021.

This is a reminder that ACN providers will no longer be contracted with Bright HealthCare through its respective ACN participation agreements, as of Jan. 1, 2022.

If you are a PCCN provider you will not be impacted by this change. Your practice will continue to be contracted with Bright Health moving into 2022.

If your provider organization is not contracted directly with Bright HealthCare and you wish to do so, please visit the Join Our Network page on Bright HealthCare’s website.

We appreciate your support in helping to serve Bright HealthCare members.

• • Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for additional news, health-related content for providers and patients, organizational updates, and more.
  • Learn more about ACN’s Care Coordination program and services designed to partner and support your practice in achieving healthy, cost-effective patient outcomes in this video.
  • Dignity Health is hosting a free Continuing Medical Education (CME) event March 30, 2022, from 5-8 p.m. at Ocotillo Golf Club in Chandler. Adatee Okonkwo, MD, will be joined by several panelists to discuss “Modern Approaches to Colorectal Cancer,” including updates in patient screening, utility of non-endoscopic screening methods, and technology advances in treatment, including robotic demonstrations. The CME event is open to all PCPs, IMs, Medical/Radiology Oncology/GI providers, PAs, NPs, RNs, Residents, and Medical Students. More information and registration is available here.
  • Abrazo’s Arrowhead Campus now offers Aquablation, a new therapy using waterjet ablation for treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Aquablation therapy is performed by the AquaBeam Robotic System, the first FDA-cleared, surgical robot utilizing automated tissue resection for treatment of lower UTI symptoms due to BPH.
  • Dignity Health Chandler Regional Medical Center opened its new 5-story patient Tower D this fall. Tower D includes the hospital’s new main entrance, along with 96 patient-care beds, increasing its bed count to 429. The building includes four stories of patient-ready floors, plus a fifth floor for future occupancy and a basement that houses a pharmacy. An additional 36 ICU patient rooms (third floor), 36 standard patient rooms (fourth floor), and a 1,100-capacity parking garage. It’s Chandler Regional Medical Center’s second major expansion in the past decade.
  • Abrazo’s Scottsdale Campus, an accredited comprehensive bariatric facility through the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program, has earned top designations for quality and value in bariatric surgery from Blue Distinction+, Optum Center of Excellence and Cigna 3 Star Quality designations for bariatric surgery. It’s currently the only hospital in greater Phoenix with the Blue Distinction+ Center for Bariatric Surgery.
  • Abrazo Arizona Heart Hospital recently treated its 1,000th patient using the Watchman™ implant to help reduce stroke risk in people with atrial fibrillation (AFib) not caused by a heart valve problem. The Watchman™ device is implanted to permanently close off the left atrial appendage, the area of the heart where stroke-causing blood clots commonly form. The device is passed through a catheter in a vein, then deployed into the heart.

• Bella Women’s Care (Mesa, Phoenix)
• Red Butte Healthcare (Chandler)
• Lynch Vein and Aesthetics (Peoria)
• Plaza Del Rio Eye Clinic (Peoria)

You can also view a list of practices and providers no longer participating with ACN.