Healthcare Financial News

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today released the first-ever inventory of quality measures that are used for reporting, payment, or quality improvement by its agencies and operating divisions. The HHS measure inventory, which is available on the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse™, a web site of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is designed to advance collaboration within the quality measurement community and to synchronize measurement.

The measures currently can be sorted by agency or operating division and can be downloaded in their entirety. In the next several months, the inventory will be enhanced so the measure can be sorted by condition, setting, or measure domain.

"The release of this inventory is an important step in providing healthcare providers, clinicians, patients, policymakers and others with reliable, comprehensive information on the department's efforts to measure and improve health care quality," said AHRQ Director Carolyn Clancy, M.D. "I hope this is the start of a longer term effort for the department to develop further an overarching strategy that can be aligned with public and private efforts to accelerate improvements in quality and value for all Americans."

The nonprofit Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) has issued a report titled “From Volume to Value: Transforming Health Care Payment and Delivery Systems to Improve Quality and Reduce Costs.” The report urges fixes that could save billions of dollars and make expanding health insurance to the uninsured more affordable.

A summit of more than 100 leaders from across the country--doctors, hospitals, insurers, academics, foundations, government, regional healthcare collaboratives, and others--generated the recommendations. All endorse a profound transformation in the way hospitals, doctors, and other health care professionals are paid.

According to the report, our healthcare payment system is built to reward the quantity, not the quality, of treatment. This payment system penalizes doctors and hospitals financially for eliminating unnecessary tests and treatments, preventing infections, and keeping people healthy. The report recommends that insurers pay doctors and hospitals a single amount that covers all the services a patient needs instead of separate fees for each service. Moreover, insurers should change the system from paying more to correct errors and preventable complications to rewarding healthcare providers for successfully treating patients.

Read the report.