Simply find, or make up, more measures until they do:
When a good researcher stops and wonders why his experiment failed, he gains valuable information to steer him in the right direction to test his next hypothesis. CMS does not seem capable of this. Rather, their answer is to develop still more convoluted “measures” rather than focusing on other, more urgent matters that might save the health care system.
Related posts:
- Why today’s quality measures do not improve health outcomes
- Does pay-for-performance work, and will it improve health care quality or patient outcomes?
- Whistle-blowing = bad outcomes
- Time to cognate
- The best way for hospitals to improve themselves
- Will the current economic woes save primary care?
- Health care reform needs to improve physician satisfaction
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 1 comment }
P4P is doomed to fail, as it clashes with the consumer-driven health care movement.
Think about it. If consumers/patients increasingly shoulder the decision-making process about what part of the healthcare dollar to spend on which intervention, test, or visit, and are increasingly responsible for educating themselves and pursuing prevention and treatment, then physicians’ control over what patients do or don’t do will shrink (no pun intended).
Which means that the “performance” will be under the consumers’ control, not ours. If we are paid for performance, then the rewarded behavior will be to have patients who follow like sheep, and to get rid of ones who don’t do as they are told.
This doesn’t sound like progress. What does sound like progress is to apply P4P to the CONSUMER. Pay them for good hgb A1C’s, for good cholesterol levels, for taking their atenolol.
Now, that makes sense. Docs then become their consultants/advisors, helping them make the right decisions. If patients are to be fully placed in the driver’s seat, then pay them to do a good job.
(Yes, good health is a reward in itself, but the pay off is so far down the road, folks need some immediate gratification to maximize healthy behaviors.)
Comments on this entry are closed.