Medicare hands out $12M in hospital quality bonuses

The 230 hospitals that took part in the CMS/HQID value-based purchasing project raised their overall quality by an average of 17.2 percent during the fourth year of the project on delivery of 30 selected quality measures. As a result of their strong performance, the group will share $12 million in bonuses.

During the project, about 4,700 heart attack patients have been saved during those four years, according to an analysis by Premier, which co-sponsored the project. Also, 1.5 million patients treated in five clinical areas received about 500,000 additional recommended evidence-based clinical quality measures.

Further research by Premier--using the Hospital Compare dataset--showed that by March 2008, Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration participants scored on average 6.9 percentage points higher than non participants on 19 performance measures used by the government's Hospital Compare.

To learn more about the project:
- read this Health Leaders Media piece