Dive Brief:
- Hospital performance tracking systems such as the prominent American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) don't directly link to improvements in care and cost reductions, according to a new study published in JAMA.
- The study compared ACS NSQIP hospitals with non-participating hospitals and found that those in both groups trended toward progressively improved outcomes, but that utilization of the tracking program had no significant impact on the rate of improvements.
- The study, which focused on the association between performance tracking and Medicare patient outcomes and Medicare costs, was authored by staff at the University of Michigan's Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy.
Dive Insight:
Despite the lukewarm results of the study, the authors don't advocate abandoning tracking programs, but rather, doing something more meaningful with the data to spur action—such as reporting the results publicly or tying them to other incentives.
As Ars Technica notes, simply tracking hospital data does not make it meaningful. "If the ACS NSQIP were to pair the hospital data tracking with an improvement incentives measure, in which either the physician or the hospital received a financial benefit for improved patient outcomes, this tracked information could begin to have real clinical relevance," the publication says.