Frequently Asked Questions

Our clinically integrated network is made up of the following:

• University of Chicago Faculty Practice
• UChicago Medicine Medical Group
• Independent community PCPs and specialists
• AdventHealth Medical Group (Great Lakes)

Affiliate members share the goal of improving the patient experience and health outcomes while stabilizing health care costs. Affiliated physicians participate jointly in contracts with payors and employers based on the quality performance and outcomes of the entire group.

The CIN has a physician-led board of directors that includes providers from UChicago Medicine, affiliated hospitals and independent practices. A team of experienced operational leaders manage the CIN and report to this board of directors.

An increasing portion of health plan payments to providers are made through value based care incentives. UChicago Medicine’s CIN collaborates with commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid payors to enter value-based contracts. These agreements typically involve HEDIS-based quality outcomes, process metrics and utilization metrics. UChicago Medicine’s CIN supports independent physician practices to continuously improve quality for value-based contracting.

While patients may have restrictions on their referral options if they are in specific health plans (like a narrow network HMO) we otherwise do not have strict requirements for directing referrals to specific specialists. Our CIN does, however, make world class speciality care available for your patients.

Yes, as part of our CIN, you’ll need to share clinical data from your EMR with our data integration platform. Our network enables seamless access to patient information across providers. With shared data, members can measure quality with standardized metrics, track costs to improve efficiency, and coordinate care more effectively. This approach leads to better outcomes, cost savings and improved care quality.

No. Provided that your EMR is ONC Health IT certified and can produce data files required for quality reporting (QRDA-1 file format) then you would not have to change your EMR. A third-party vendor can collect extra data from each practice’s independent system.

Participating physicians agree to the following:

• Maintain compliance with CIN participation policy
• Connect approved EMR to UChicago Medicine’s population health software with ability to do CMS reporting
• Attend CIN VBC meetings
• Engage with UChicago Medicine population health team for care gap closure, care management, patient outreach and reporting
• Use UChicago Medicine-based secure email for all CIN communications
• Collaborate with payer relations team
• Maintain board certification