Pay-for-Performance Not Linked to Better Patient Outcomes

Funny. Pay-for-performance works so well in other settings.

Hospitals participating in the Medicare Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) had no improvement in 30-day mortality or other patient outcomes compared with control hospitals participating in public reporting alone, according to the results of a study using Medicare data published online March 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"These results suggest that the way we have currently conceived of pay-for-performance is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on patient outcomes," lead author Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, associate professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in Boston, Massachusetts, said in a news release.

A silly idea doomed from the start.

Performance cannot be separated from patient compliance and their contribution to illness and complications. Never had a chance.

Better to get back to pay-for-performance basics.