When Quality Metrics Harm Quality

With the mantra of value-based care, providers are increasingly being tasked with checklists that ensure quality care is being delivered to the patient. As the movement toward linking reimbursement with value gains momentum, experts worry that this increased administrative burden on providers might harm, not improve, healthcare quality.

In the current issue of JAMA, David Blumenthal, MD, MPP; and J. Michael McGinnis, MD, MPP, write, "The budding enthusiasm for performance measurement, however, has begun to create serious problems for public health and for health care. Not only are many measures imperfect, but they are proliferating at an astonishing rate, increasing the burden and blurring the ability to focus on issues most important to better health and health care."

Read an associated blog on The Incidental Economist here: http://bit.ly/1AluBNP