2006 Priority Health Quality Award Winner

Forest Hills Pediatric Associates, PC
"Every doctor has her or his own way of handling patients and different medical situations for a child," according to Dr. Susan Wakefield. "Still, we have to have ways to make sure we're dealing with health issues in a consistent and constant way. Priority Health's performance measures are one of the tools that help us reach that consistency."

With 3,800 patients who are members of Priority Health, the group was unaware until recently that its performance is among the top ten groups in Priority Health's provider measurement system. "As pleased as we are to hear where we stand, I can't say we set out with that recognition on our minds. However, we do share Priority Health's very strong emphasis on not just talking about prevention but taking the steps to make it part of what we do every day."

According to Dr. Wakefield, her position of medical leader for the group affords her a rare opportunity to affect patient care. "As a group, we reduced my patient load dramatically so I can focus on our overall quality of care," she noted. "Not every group would make that investment, but it's a real indication of how seriously our team takes our patients and our ability to respond to them." That said, she emphasizes that she supported rather than drove the efforts of the different doctors to be responsive to quality measurement.

At a time when many parents are beginning to question the safety of childhood immunizations, Forest Hills Pediatric Associates finds it must continue to focus on the education process. The importance of immunizations would seem to be universally recognized but that is apparently not the case. "We have to explain that a parent's concerns are important to us but that we know that immunizations are a way to protect both individual children and other children from disease."