Currently, few health care providers measure and report their patient outcomes, which leads to several problems. Attempts to introduce price transparency without outcomes transparency could trigger a “race to the bottom.” Should Medicare coverage be expanded to non-elderly populations, its much lower reimbursements will create pressure on providers to lower their spending in ways that produce even worse outcomes. Even without Medicare expansion, the lack of systematic outcomes measurement has made the migration from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursements, especially bundled payments, less effective and more difficult to implement. Hidden variation in outcomes prevents providers from learning from others how to produce better outcomes for their patients. We propose that the Congress elected in November 2020 mandate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to begin requiring outcomes measurement by all providers reimbursed under government Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Keywords: outcomes reporting; outcomes measurement; Medicare; Medicaid; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics;
Citation:
Kaplan, Robert S., and Michael E. Porter. "Mandate Outcomes Reporting." Health Management, Policy and Innovation 4, no. 3 (2019). View Details