Welvie surgery decision-support program to offer surgeon and hospital quality ratings based on medical outcomes

CHICAGO, Nov. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Welvie, the nation's leading surgery decision-support company, will offer MPIRICA Quality Scores to enhance patients' ability to choose the best performing surgeon and hospital. Welvie announced today that it has entered a partnership with MPIRICA Health, of Bellevue Washington, to offer MPIRICA's outcomes-based surgical ratings to Welvie's current customers including national Medicare Advantage and commercial health plans.

Participants will be able to access the scores through the Welvie program. They can search ratings by procedure, surgeon or hospital.

There is wide disparity in surgical quality across the country for both outpatient and inpatient care, with the poorest performing facilities experiencing 3-5 times higher rates of complications, readmissions, and mortality. "Patients should be aware of these differences when evaluating potential hospitals and surgeons," said Welvie CEO, Chip Tooke.

Moreover, lack of quality is not only dangerous, it is expensive. Severe complications can increase a surgical procedure's cost to almost six times more than the same procedure with no complications.

"Welvie encourages consumers to investigate both doctors and hospitals before surgery, and access to MPIRICA Quality Scores will make it much easier to do so," said Tooke. "MPIRICA has the most robust and complex surgery scores available."

In May 2016, Welvie announced their achievement of significant decreases in surgery expenditures through a controlled study of Medicare programs. The new MPIRICA partnership is intended to further save on surgery costs by helping beneficiaries find high quality providers.

MPIRICA's quality scores cover almost 1,000 inpatient and outpatient procedures, through analysis of thousands of hospitals and physicians. These scores take into consideration the important things a patient should think about when planning for surgery and combines them into a single, three-digit FICO-like performance score.

"There is no substitute for an objective, outcomes-based approach that adjusts for patient risk," said Shakil Haroon, Founder and CEO of MPIRICA. "Yelp-style reviews may provide insight into subjective patient experiences, but are not based on quantifiable results and fail to allow an apples-to-apples comparison of a surgeon's performance."

About Welvie
Welvie is a leading surgery decision-support company. Its robust shared decision-making product – including surgery analytics, comprehensive outreach and decision-support program – helps consumers make more fully informed decisions about surgery. Additionally, the program helps health plans, employers and government agencies in improving outcomes for patients, whether they choose surgery or not. For more information about Welvie, visit www.welvie.com.

About MPIRICA Health, Inc.
MPIRICA Health was founded in 2014 to demystify healthcare quality transparency for consumers and payers using an intuitive measurement of surgeons and hospitals, based on past performance at a surgical procedure level. Find information about MPIRICA on Twitter, LinkedIn or at www.mpirica.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161128/443248LOGO

SOURCE Welvie

Related Links

http://www.mpirica.com