The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) recently encouraged improved performance measurement policies in the new payment models that are part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).
It is important to accurately measure various parts of patient care, as this is integral to the new payment models included in MACRA. This is why Robert Wergin, board chair of the AAFP, from Milford, Nebraska, has made recommendations in a draft white paper, titled “Accelerating and Aligning Population-Based Payment Models: Performance Measurement.”
Wergin wrote the draft with the population-based payment workgroup collaborating with the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network. The paper outlines four different priority issues: data sharing, patient attribution, performance measurement and financial benchmarking.
To address these issues, the writers recommended developing a national data infrastructure, providing measures that are meaningful to patients and creating measuring systems that give patients rewards for improvements. These systems should also sidestep any forced curve and encourage sharing best practices.
"The AAFP supports reasonable and achievable quality, cost and other outcome measures that promote continuous quality improvement and measure patient experiences," Wergin said. "The AAFP opposes any approach that requires physicians to report on a complex set of measures that do not impact or influence the quality of care provided to patients."
