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Effect of pay-for-performance incentives on quality of care in small practices with electronic health records: a randomized trial.

ABSTRACT: Most evaluations of pay-for-performance (P4P) incentives have focused on large-group practices. Thus, the effect of P4P in small practices, where many US residents receive care, is largely unknown. Furthermore, whether electronic health records (EHRs) with chronic disease management capabilities support small-practice response to P4P has not been studied.To assess the effect of P4P incentives on quality in EHR-enabled small practices in the context of an established quality improvement initiative.A cluster-randomized trial of small (<10 clinicians) primary care clinics in New York City from April 2009 through March 2010. A city program provided all participating clinics with the same EHR software with decision support and patient registry functionalities and quality improvement specialists offering technical assistance.Incentivized clinics were paid for each patient whose care met the performance criteria, but they received higher payments for patients with comorbidities, who had Medicaid insurance, or who were uninsured (maximum payments: $200/patient; $100,000/clinic). Quality reports were given quarterly to both the intervention and control groups.Comparison of differences in performance improvement, from the beginning to the end of the study, between control and intervention clinics for aspirin or antithrombotic prescription, blood pressure control, cholesterol control, and smoking cessation interventions. Mixed-effects logistic regression was used to account for clustering of patients within clinics, with a treatment by time interaction term assessing the statistical significance of the effect of the intervention.Participating clinics (n?=?42 for each group) had similar baseline characteristics, with a mean of 4592 (median, 2500) patients at the intervention group clinics and 3042 (median, 2000) at the control group clinics. Intervention clinics had greater adjusted absolute improvement in rates of appropriate antithrombotic prescription (12.0% vs 6.1%, difference: 6.0% [95% CI, 2.2% to 9.7%], P?=?.001 for interaction term), blood pressure control (no comorbidities: 9.7% vs 4.3%, difference: 5.5% [95% CI, 1.6% to 9.3%], P?=?.01 for interaction term; with diabetes mellitus: 9.0% vs 1.2%, difference: 7.8% [95% CI, 3.2% to 12.4%], P?=?.007 for interaction term; with diabetes mellitus or ischemic vascular disease: 9.5% vs 1.7%, difference: 7.8% [95% CI, 3.0% to 12.6%], P?=?.01 for interaction term), and in smoking cessation interventions (12.4% vs 7.7%, difference: 4.7% [95% CI, -0.3% to 9.6%], P?=?.02 for interaction term). Intervention clinics performed better on all measures for Medicaid and uninsured patients except cholesterol control, but no differences were statistically significant.Among small EHR-enabled clinics, a P4P incentive program compared with usual care resulted in modest improvements in cardiovascular care processes and outcomes. Because most proposed P4P programs are intended to remain in place more than a year, further research is needed to determine whether this effect increases or decreases over time.clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00884013.

SUBMITTER: Bardach NS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4013308 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effect of pay-for-performance incentives on quality of care in small practices with electronic health records: a randomized trial.

Bardach Naomi S NS Wang Jason J JJ De Leon Samantha F SF Shih Sarah C SC Boscardin W John WJ Goldman L Elizabeth LE Dudley R Adams RA

JAMA 20130901 10

<h4>Importance</h4>Most evaluations of pay-for-performance (P4P) incentives have focused on large-group practices. Thus, the effect of P4P in small practices, where many US residents receive care, is largely unknown. Furthermore, whether electronic health records (EHRs) with chronic disease management capabilities support small-practice response to P4P has not been studied.<h4>Objective</h4>To assess the effect of P4P incentives on quality in EHR-enabled small practices in the context of an esta ...[more]

PMID: 24026600

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Project description:BackgroundAlthough pay-for-performance (P4P) has become a central strategy for improving quality in US healthcare, questions persist about the effectiveness of these programs. A key question is whether quality improvement that occurs as a result of P4P programs is sustainable, particularly if incentives are removed.ObjectiveTo investigate sustainability of performance levels following removal of performance-based incentives.Design, setting, and participantsObservational cohort study that capitalized on a P4P program within the Veterans Health Administration (VA) that included adoption and subsequent removal of performance-based incentives for selected inpatient quality measures. The study sample comprised 128 acute care VA hospitals where performance was assessed between 2004 and 2010.InterventionVA system managers set annual performance goals in consultation with clinical leaders, and report performance scores to medical centers on a quarterly basis. These scores inform performance-based incentives for facilities and their managers. Bonuses are distributed based on the attainment of these performance goals.MeasurementsSeven quality of care measures for acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, and pneumonia linked to performance-based incentives.ResultsSignificant improvements in performance were observed for six of seven quality of care measures following adoption of performance-based incentives and were maintained up to the removal of the incentive; subsequently, the observed performance levels were sustained.LimitationsThis is a quasi-experimental study without a comparison group; causal conclusions are limited.ConclusionThe maintenance of performance levels after removal of a performance-based incentive has implications for the implementation of Medicare's value-based purchasing initiative and other P4P programs. Additional research is needed to better understand human and system-level factors that mediate sustainability of performance-based incentives.

Project description:Hospital report cards and financial incentives linked to performance require clinical data that are reliable, appropriate, timely, and cost-effective to process. Pay-for-performance plans are transitioning to automated electronic health record (EHR) data as an efficient method to generate data needed for these programs.To determine how well data from automated processing of structured fields in the electronic health record (AP-EHR) reflect data from manual chart review and the impact of these data on performance rewards.Cross-sectional analysis of performance measures used in a cluster randomized trial assessing the impact of financial incentives on guideline-recommended care for hypertension.A total of 2840 patients with hypertension assigned to participating physicians at 12 Veterans Affairs hospital-based outpatient clinics. Fifty-two physicians and 33 primary care personnel received incentive payments.Overall, positive and negative agreement indices and Cohen's kappa were calculated for assessments of guideline-recommended antihypertensive medication use, blood pressure (BP) control, and appropriate response to uncontrolled BP. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to assess how similar participants' calculated earnings were between the data sources.By manual chart review data, 72.3% of patients were considered to have received guideline-recommended antihypertensive medications compared with 65.0% by AP-EHR review (?=0.51). Manual review indicated 69.5% of patients had controlled BP compared with 66.8% by AP-EHR review (?=0.87). Compared with 52.2% of patients per the manual review, 39.8% received an appropriate response by AP-EHR review (?=0.28). Participants' incentive payments calculated using the 2 methods were highly correlated (r?0.98). Using the AP-EHR data to calculate earnings, participants' payment changes ranged from a decrease of $91.00 (-30.3%) to an increase of $18.20 (+7.4%) for medication use (interquartile range, -14.4% to 0%) and a decrease of $100.10 (-31.4%) to an increase of $36.40 (+15.4%) for BP control or appropriate response to uncontrolled BP (interquartile range, -11.9% to -6.1%).Pay-for-performance plans that use only EHR data should carefully consider the measures and the structure of the EHR before data collection and financial incentive disbursement. For this study, we feel that a 10% difference in the total amount of incentive earnings disbursed based on AP-EHR data compared with manual review is acceptable given the time and resources required to abstract data from medical records.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Policies promoting widespread adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) are premised on the hope that they can improve the coordination of care. Yet little is known about whether and how physician practices use current EMRs to facilitate coordination. OBJECTIVES: We examine whether and how practices use commercial EMRs to support coordination tasks and identify work-around practices have created to address new coordination challenges. DESIGN, SETTING: Semi-structured telephone interviews in 12 randomly selected communities. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty respondents, including 52 physicians or staff from 26 practices with commercial ambulatory care EMRs in place for at least 2 years, chief medical officers at four EMR vendors, and four national thought leaders. RESULTS: Six major themes emerged: (1) EMRs facilitate within-office care coordination, chiefly by providing access to data during patient encounters and through electronic messaging; (2) EMRs are less able to support coordination between clinicians and settings, in part due to their design and a lack of standardization of key data elements required for information exchange; (3) managing information overflow from EMRs is a challenge for clinicians; (4) clinicians believe current EMRs cannot adequately capture the medical decision-making process and future care plans to support coordination; (5) realizing EMRs' potential for facilitating coordination requires evolution of practice operational processes; (6) current fee-for-service reimbursement encourages EMR use for documentation of billable events (office visits, procedures) and not of care coordination (which is not a billable activity). CONCLUSIONS: There is a gap between policy-makers' expectation of, and clinical practitioners' experience with, current electronic medical records' ability to support coordination of care. Policymakers could expand current health information technology policies to support assessment of how well the technology facilitates tasks necessary for coordination. By reforming payment policy to include care coordination, policymakers could encourage the evolution of EMR technology to include capabilities that support coordination, for example, allowing for inter-practice data exchange and multi-provider clinical decision support.

Dataset Information

Effect of pay-for-performance incentives on quality of care in small practices with electronic health records: a randomized trial.

Publications

Effect of pay-for-performance incentives on quality of care in small practices with electronic health records: a randomized trial.

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