People & Positions:

Anceta CEO Kevin Brown to Oversee AMGA's Data Warehouse

The American Medical Group Association announced that Kevin Brown has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Anceta. Brown will lead Anceta's efforts to develop a national data warehouse that will allow medical groups to access key practice management, clinical, health outcome, economic, and quality benchmarks.

"We are confident that under Kevin Brown's leadership, the data warehouse will become a reality," said AMGA president and CEO Donald W. Fisher, Ph.D., who is also Anceta's Chairman of the Board. "His background and talents are perfectly suited to this historic endeavor."

Mr. Brown has 32 years of progressive experience, with the last 15 years spent as a senior level health care executive. Most recently, he has been providing consulting services to various health care-related businesses as well as sitting on a number of Boards of Directors for health care-related companies. Prior to 1999, Mr. Brown spent 10 years with AMISYS Managed Care Systems, a publicly held heath care IT company, as the chairman, president, and Chief Executive Officer. Previously, he spent 7 years as the vice president of the HMO Systems Division of CompuCare. Prior to working for CompuCare, Mr. Brown was the Membership and Billing Manager at the Harvard Community Health Plan.

Anceta has been established as a for-profit company to develop a nationwide medical information data warehouse using the combined data from participating AMGA members. The AMGA represents some 300 multispecialty medical groups throughout the United States. The warehouse will bring many benefits to participating medical groups, including access to comparative clinical and operational performance data; the ability to select peer groups for comparison; high levels of confidentiality and security; access to the database and analytic tools through secure Internet communications; and participation in the selection and/or design of risk adjustment methods. According to Fisher, it will give them an enhanced capability to conduct physician productivity evaluations and assess clinical guideline compliance, as well as conduct practice pattern studies. The warehouse will allow groups to track lab and pharmacy data to billing code and capture higher payment eligibility, and to reduce the incidence of missed billing for services. In addition, the data warehouse will provide clinical performance and clinical outcomes data to leverage market positions and payer negotiation and to expand medical groups' ability to attract clinical research funding.

AMGA is an association that represents medical groups, including some of the nation's largest integrated health care delivery systems. AMGA's mission is to shape the health care environment by advancing high quality, cost-effective, patient-centered, and physician-directed health care. The members of AMGA deliver health care to more than 50 million patients in 40 states, including 15 million capitated lives. The average AMGA member group has 186 physicians and 12 satellite locations. Headquartered in Alexandria, VA, AMGA is the strategic partner for medical groups providing a comprehensive package of benefits, including political advocacy, educational and networking programs and publications, benchmarking data services, and financial and operations assistance.

Contact Donald W. Fisher, Ph.D. 703-838-0033 x331, dfisher@amga.org.