Blue Cross committed to coordination of care and exchange of information among practitioners

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan collects and analyzes data each year to facilitate the coordination of care and exchange of information among specialists, behavioral health providers and primary care physicians following inpatient and outpatient visits.

Good two-way information exchange is especially important as we work to improve continuity and coordination of care within our network. For example, we not only need primary care providers to share information with specialists (including behavioral health specialists), but we need specialists to share patient information with the primary care providers as well.

Patient care that isn’t coordinated across care settings results in confusion for members, increased risks to patient safety and unnecessary costs due to duplicate testing or procedures. Collaboration among health care providers can also greatly improve member satisfaction.

We can work together to accomplish our goal of 100% coordination of care among all providers by:

• Ensuring that specialists and behavioral health care providers have the correct contact information about the patient’s primary care provider at the time of the visit
• Requesting that specialists and behavioral health providers forward post-visit information to the patient’s primary care provider
• Ensuring that primary care providers forward a patient’s medical information to any specialists or behavioral health providers who are treating the patient, as  needed
• Asking behavioral health patients to sign an authorization for release of information or including a note of refusal in their chart if a patient declines to share information

We encourage all heath care providers to continue to take steps to enhance the coordination of care and information exchange across the continuum of care to improve member satisfaction and care quality.