New health technologies have allowed physicians to collect ever-increasing amounts of data to help measure—and ultimately, improve—patient care. As more of this data continues to impact how practices are evaluated and paid, here are five key trends one expert recommends that every physician follow.
Quality measurements have proven to bolster patient care, with plenty of evidence of improvements in such critical areas as hospital readmissions, early elective delivery and central line infections, Richard Bankowitz, MD, told physicians at an education session during the 2015 AMA Interim Meeting. Dr. Bankowitz is chief medical officer for Premier Inc., which collects and measures data to improve efficiencies for physicians and health care facilities.
Despite these improvements, physicians still grapple with challenges when they are forced to report quality measures that don’t necessarily align with their practice setting, specialty or payment model, Dr. Bankowitz said.
When faced with copious patient data and federal regulations on reporting quality metrics, Dr. Bankowitz said physicians must ask themselves: “Are we measuring what even matters, and what are we looking to find using these quality measures?"
To successfully address this question, he suggested that physicians note these five key trends when it comes to quality measurement:
Transparency
Successful quality measurement will embody a level of transparency that allows patients to easily understand their health costs. “There’s a good chance your patient will want to know how much that [health procedure] costs when [she] walks through the door for that hip replacement,” Dr. Bankowitz said, noting that pricing for health procedures will be essential to future care quality.
Understand the value of “big picture” measurements
“Measurement should begin with the end [goal] in mind,” he said. Physicians shouldn’t mire themselves down measuring every piece of granular patient data but instead focus on measuring “things that matter” and align with essential goals, such as those listed in the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) report “Vital signs: Core metrics for health and health care progress.”
Value will be everything
As practices shift from time- to value-based payment models, patients and employers will want to know the value of the actual health procedure they are receiving. Physicians will have to incorporate value into how they measure quality care, Dr. Bankowitz said.
Measurement will span the continuum of care
Gone are the days when physicians only had to think about their immediate practice procedures. Instead, “quality measurements [are moving] outside silos” to capture metrics on patients across health care facilities and specialties, Dr. Bankowitz said. Programs will “hold [physicians] accountable for measures across a continuum of care,” he said.
Focus on digital data
Despite complications with electronic health records (EHR), physicians will have to know how to define quality measures within an EHR system, Dr. Bankowitz said, noting that organizations such as the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement are working to help physicians make better use of EHR data.
