WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2024 — Sixty-eight of its member physician groups achieved top-ranked “Elite” status in America’s Physician Groups’ annual survey of core capabilities in delivering health care that is accountable for costs and quality, the organization announced today. APG’s Standards of Excellence™ (SOE®) program is an annual, comprehensive survey that the organization administers to evaluate the degree to which its physician group members are positioned to provide coordinated, patient-centered, cost-effective care.
“Achieving SOE® elite status demonstrates that these APG member organizations are among the highest-performing organizations engaged in the range of value-based care models: Medicare Advantage, the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and multiple models introduced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Innovation Center,” said APG President and CEO Susan Dentzer. “The capabilities that these groups possess in such areas as providing advanced primary care, delivering patient-centered care, managing population health, and being transparent about their quality and costs place them at the forefront of U.S. physician practices and health systems.”
Now in its 17th year, the SOE® survey sets the industry standard for evaluating the sophistication of accountable physician practices and organizations. It also serves as an “implementation playbook” for value-based care and is among the few tools that enable physician groups to benchmark their accountable care capabilities against their peers. The capabilities of survey participants are scored in such areas as the sophistication of their health information technology, comprehensiveness of their population health management programs, ability to provide patient-centered care and advanced primary care, and accountability for costs and quality outcomes.
Each year, APG’s Clinical Quality Leadership Forum adds new elements to each category to set a higher standard than the previous year, in line with both rising national health care standards and increased expectations of government agencies, purchasers, payers, and patients. Participants in the annual SOE® survey receive between zero and five stars based on their performance delivering risk-based, coordinated care in five of six domains (or categories). APG collaborated with PRC on the review, administration, and scoring of the SOE® survey.
“Through the survey data, we see that the majority of our survey participants derive more than half of their revenues from value-based arrangements, equipping the groups to improve health and health care in their communities,” said Susan M. Huang, MD, APG Chief Medical Officer. “The 2024 data shows that over 90 percent of participating APG members, especially the SOE® Elite-status organizations, provide innovative care such as complex care management and integrated behavioral health services, including tele-behavioral health, and have moved further upstream to address patients’ social determinants of health proactively.”
The SOE® program is open to all APG’s approximately 360 physician group members, who collectively provide care to approximately 1 in 4 Americans. This year, 119 medical groups, health systems, accountable care organizations, managed services organizations, and independent practice associations within APG’s membership participated in the voluntary survey. Collectively, these groups care for a total of 27.4 million people who are attributed or managed under commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid coverage.
This year’s SOE® Elite-status recipients were formally recognized this morning at the APG Fall Conference 2024 in Washington, DC.
For more information about the SOE® program, visit our website.
About America’s Physician Groups
America’s Physician Groups is a national association representing approximately 360 physician groups with approximately 170,000 physicians providing care to nearly 90 million patients. APG’s motto, “Taking Responsibility for America’s Health,” represents our members’ commitment to clinically integrated, coordinated, value-based health care in which physician groups are accountable for the costs and quality of patient care. Visit us atwww.apg.org.###
