A number of meeting attendees said the immediate business case for adopting quality measures is weak, especially for practices that don’t have an EHR. EHRs are a cornerstone of CMS’ value-driven healthcare initiative. “This may be a five- to 10-year time horizon,” noted Dr. Solomon, but he agreed with other speakers that quality is ultimately not about money, but about professionalism and what is best for patients.
This is exactly the position taken by Christine Cassel, MD, president of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). “The reason to support quality is because it’s a core professional value,” she said. Citing RAND data, she noted that, all over the country, patients can only expect to get the recommended treatment half the time; for Medicare patients, it is one-third of the time. “I think we have lots of data showing that we have room for improvement …” she said. “It’s well documented that measurement leads to improvement.”
