This is an excerpt from a member-only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe.

Deaconess Billings Clinic (DBC) in Billings, MT, hopes to play a small part in changing the way Medicare reimburses organizations for care, says Dianne Elliott, RN, a quality specialist for DBC and project coordinator for the Medicare Physician Group Practice (PGP) demonstration. As one of the 10 group practices selected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to participate in its first-ever pay-for-performance initiative for physician practices, DBC looks forward to this endeavor, a three-year pilot set to start in the spring of 2005.