OWINGS MILLS, Md.—A Baltimore-area health plan is joining the Bridges to Excellence pay-for-performance initiative, becoming the first health plan to offer to pay $3.6 million of its own money over a three-year period in financial incentives to providers who take concrete steps to improve the quality of care they provide.

Under the CareFirst BlueCross & BlueShield incentive program, announced Monday, the Owings Mills, Md.-based health plan will pay $50 per patient to physicians who meet the National Committee for Quality Assurance's Physician Practice Connections criteria, which promote the use of information technology to improve patient safety and standardize care. CareFirst also will reimburse physicians for the costs associated with pursuing NCQA certification.

The incentives are the first to be paid directly by a health plan under Bridges to Excellence, said Francois de Brantes, president of the initiative and program leader for corporate health initiatives at Fairfield, Conn.-based General Electric Co., one of the employers that started the initiative. All of the other BTE initiatives launched to date have involved employer funds, he said.

"The only way pay for performance can work is if health plans deploy it across their entire book of business, not simply to selected employers," Mr. De Brantes said. "It's a numbers game, and you need a lot of covered lives to make the numbers work. That can really only be achieved when plans include all their members."

Bridges to Excellence, a joint effort launched by employers, physicians, health plans and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in April 2003, has already made payments to providers that met two performance criteria: adhering to the NCQA quality standard for care of diabetic patients; and for "physician office link," a term used to describe the combination of clinical, patient education and case management systems applicable across the entire patient population (BI, June 7, 2004).

Other founding members of BTE include Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co., Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc., Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., and Louisville, Ky.-based Humana Inc. in its capacity as an employer.