Quality movement is "here to stay": AMNews interviews Robert Haralson III, MD

As Medicare's pay-for-reporting initiative gets under way, an executive committee member of the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement talks about the focus on quality.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. July 2, 2007.

For years, health plans have ranked physicians' quality using measures that many doctors find suspect. Hundreds of pay-for-performance programs are now up and running, with more than half of HMOs including such incentives in their physician contracts.

The latest to join is the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which this month began offering physicians a 1.5% bonus on Medicare reimbursements for reporting on at least three quality measures for 80% of their patients in that category.

Fifty-nine of the 74 Medicare-reportable measures were developed by the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, a body convened by the AMA and composed of more than 100 national specialty and state medical societies; federal agencies, medical boards, disease groups and health plans also are members.

Robert Haralson III, MD, is a member of the consortium's executive committee. Dr. Haralson recently met with AMNews to talk about the consortium's work, clinical quality improvement and pay-for-performance.

AMNews: Briefly describe how the consortium works.

Dr. Haralson: There are a number of medical specialty societies that suggest performance measures to the consortium, and we insist they be based on the best evidence available. Various work groups within the consortium develop the measures and then submit them to the National Quality Forum for endorsement and then they are moved over to the AQA Alliance for implementation.