OPEN MINDS The Behavioral Health & Social Service Industry Analyst Industry News Blue Cross and Blue Shield became one of the first payors to link hospital payment with patient outcome, when it adopted its new payment system, known as Illness Outcome Groups (IOG) on January 1, 1991. The IOG system will be used to classify illnesses by their expected risk of adverse outcomes. Hospitals whose adverse outcomes exceed the outcomes rate predicted by the BCBSM system would not get reimbursed for the extra costs associated with treating those excess adverse outcomes . . .