In today’s healthcare market, being a successful physician does not necessarily translate into being a quality physician, according to oncologist and blogger James C. Salwitz, M.D.
With CMS dropping the MACRA final rule, physicians and industry leaders are grappling with the government’s first stab at measuring and rewarding healthcare quality in a comprehensive fashion--and finding the task complicated and daunting. Despite spending a huge amount of money on reporting quality measures, those measures have represented only a small portion of doctors’ overall pay, per previous reporting by FiercePracticeManagement.
It’s not surprising, then, that the connection between physician success and quality results is a tenuous one, writes Salwitz in MedPage Today. As professionals in a highly competitive field requiring extensive (and expensive) training, oncologists, like most of us, place a premium on keeping their jobs, he says. However, the main keys to clinical success don’t necessarily revolve around quality care, because patients and hospitals do not necessarily reward high-quality caregivers.
Per Salwitz, “this flaw in how we judge and select physicians emphasizes the need to press for more accurate quality measures outside of simply holding onto one’s job.” So while the healthcare industry generally understands the need to provide quality care, its approach to implementing a system that drives doctors to provide that care has been slow and cumbersome.
In order to measure true quality, Salwitz says the healthcare industry will need to move beyond its current set of “passive and disconnected measures,” which include training, examinations and medical boards. That, in turn, requires revolutions in data collection and reporting, establishment and monitoring of best practices, and a wide availability of integrated systems easily available to the physicians who need to work with them.
While those revolutions may seem threatening for both doctors and patients, tying quality to physician success represents “a vital and exciting tomorrow, which begins now and is only a short time away,” writes Salwitz.