Dive Brief:
- A new study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that performance feedback might not do much to improve care.
- To determine what impact performance feedback has, researchers performed an analysis of the impact of performance reports on risk-adjusted mortality for trauma patients; they used data from the National Trauma Data Bank to offer benchmarking reports to hospitals.
- After reviewing data on 326,206 trauma patients admitted to 44 hospitals, researchers found that performance benchmarking wasn't significantly associated with lower in-hospital mortality rates.
Dive Insight:
Researchers weren't completely discouraged by the study results. They merely felt that giving the hospitals the data, rather than individual physicians, might not have been the best way to share the information. They also argued that adding structured site visits and meaningful financial incentives would be helpful. Bottom line: it seems that benchmarks in and of themselves don't do much to include the quality of trauma care.