A review of quality metrics

The New England Journal of Medicine published a review of metrics used to assess the performance of healthcare providers. Some interesting statistics from the piece: "The National Quality Measures Clearinghouse now lists more than 2500 performance measures" and physician practices spend about $40,000 per physician annually to report on performance. This review was undertaken by the American College of Physicians (ACP). Of the 271 measures included in Medicare's Quality Payment Program, the ACP committee roughly roughly a third of them as valid, a third not valid, and a third of uncertain validity. The piece also talked about how different standards bodies come to adopt their measures.

A lot of money (and presumably attention) is supposedly being spent on collecting these performance metrics, and yet, patients lack visibility into physician performance. These standards bodies have been building consensus for years, perhaps even decades. One significant move to help drive adoption would be for industry groups (whether physician societies such as ACP or standards groups such as National Quality Forum or government agencies such as CMS) to genuinely push for metrics that are not disputed and push for the public disclosure of physician performance in those areas. While controversial, once a substantial number of physician groups start disclosing their performance, the public will come to expect these numbers and the debate around physician performance will beyond simply debating the validity of measures.