Health policy wonks need to read medical blogs. Unexpected results from simplistic pay for performance measures were predicted early on by several medical bloggers.
Consider the fact that hospitals will have little incentive to treat certain populations under Medicare’s pay for performance system:
That means that hospitals serving large groups of the elderly, women, poor, uninsured, or African-American patients might have problems competing with institutions whose patients are younger, wealthy, insured, and white.
And you wonder why more hospitals are moving to the suburbs.
