Pay-for-performance a faulty policy in medicine

[eridani]

Journal editorial: Pay-for-performance a faulty policy in medicine
By Chelsea Conaboy

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2012/08/15/journal-editorial-pay-for-performance-faulty-policy-medicine/UXCoYTe4PQYBmgxBYe5htK/story.html

Programs that reward doctors and hospitals for hitting certain quality targets are being rolled out in Massachusetts and across the country. A major focus of the health care law signed by Governor Deval Patrick last week is that doctors should be paid for keeping patients healthy, rather than for the volume of tests or treatments they order. Yet, several recent publications question whether pay-for-performance systems actually lead to better care for patients.

The programs are meant to push doctors to think about a patient's overall care and to consistently do things that are thought to improve health outcomes, such as give appropriate counseling to people with heart conditions or timely antibiotic treatment to people with pneumonia.

A review of seven studies of primary care programs that paid doctors extra for meeting certain targets, published by the Cochrane Collaboration in September, was inconclusive about the effect on quality of care."Implementation should proceed with caution," the authors wrote.

A study published in March in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a large Medicare pilot program that paid providers more if they met certain process targets -- and docked pay for those who did poorly -- did not reduce short-term patient mortality rates. A version of the program is being rolled out nationally. The authors of the paper called the results "sobering." .

BMJ
BMJ editorial ($30 fee for access):
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e5015

Why pay for performance may be incompatible with quality improvement
By Steffie Woolhandler, Dan Ariely and David U. Himmelstein

Beyond the simple criticism that pay for performance can't operate on an extended time frame and that years may elapse between treatment and outcome, the concept of pay for performance in healthcare rests on flawed assumptions about medicine, measurement, and motivation. Performance based pay may increase output for straightforward manual tasks. However, a growing body of evidence from behavioral economics and social psychology indicates that rewards can undermine motivation and worsen performance on complex cognitive tasks, especially when motivation is high to begin with.

Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: Intuitively, it seems that basing pay on performance, quality, outcomes, or other desirable results would be an improvement that we should look at as we address the very high costs of our health care system. But is this really an answer to our high costs?

Many claim that we should no longer pay for the volume or intensity of services, but pay for good outcomes instead. What is this "instead"? Good medicine requires a lot of intensive labor. The work will have to be done
if we expect optimal outcomes.

When we measure performance, quality and outcomes, precisely what are we measuring? For performance, do we use standard protocols for complex clinical presentations? Even with documentation of simple problems, who is to say that the protocol used is correct when the presenting problem may not be as it appears? As an example, a negative streptococcal screening test is used to default to a diagnosis of a "virus" in a person presenting with a sore throat, when actually the person was experiencing the onset of acute leukemia. Measuring this one encounter might score well on performance and quality, when only later would it be discovered that the outcome may be below that of a resolved viral pharyngitis.

We are now seeing a proliferation of accountable care organizations that are to be rewarded with a potion of the savings that they can produce, providing that they achieve certain standards in measuring performance, quality and outcomes. What about that sore throat? Do you order a peripheral smear on everyone with a suspected viral pharyngitis? Of course not. But if it turns out to be leukemia, do you gets points for performance, quality and cost savings, even though you missed the diagnosis, but you saved the cost of a lab test?

The point is that the concept of paying for performance is a diversion from what we should be doing about much more pressing problems: improving access for everyone by removing financial barriers to care, and improving value in our collective health care purchasing by adopting a financing system that will actually provide that value - a single payer national health program. The impact would be immensely more beneficial than any pay-for-performance scheme.

This does not mean that we shouldn't continue to try to develop methods of improving performance, quality, and outcomes. Of course we should. That is and always has been a primary goal in the art and science of medicine. What it does mean is that we should not use performance measures as a decoy to distract us from our most urgent goal - an improved Medicare for all.