Family physicians face an ever-growing set of performance measurement expectations from health plans, public programs and private payers. Until fully integrated electronic medical records can help support the harvesting of a wide variety of measures, family physicians need a strategy to get involved and learn about the value of clinical performance measurement.
Family physicians who are already involved in collecting, analyzing and reporting clinical performance measures may find that this list can help to move into areas that are not currently monitored. If there are programs in your market that provide financial incentives for collecting or reporting specific measures, focus on those first to enhance your revenue. These recommendations will also help you satisfy the requirements for the Medicare Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and satisfy one of the standards for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Patient Centered Medical Home Recognition Program.
Family physicians may also want to begin to collect information on race and ethnicity because of increasing emphasis on disparities in health care. Read the National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS).
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Suggested Measures for Family Medicine
Rational Strategy for Performance Measurement Implementation by Family Physicians
- Select a few of the recommended High Priority measures (2-page PDF file; About PDFs) to collect and report that are:
- High leverage to close a gap in care
- Common conditions from actual practice setting
- Endorsed by the National Quality Forum
- Patient oriented outcome measures (including patient experience)
- Likely to be used in performance bonus programs like PQRI
- Select other complementary measures for Quality Improvement (6-page PDF file; About PDFs) that will help achieve better results that are:
- Process measures to monitor office systems
- Not as likely to be reported outside office
- Analyzed for internal use and to inform improvement efforts
- Become knowledgeable about systems that are known to help achieve better results:
- Registries for the conditions selected
- Incorporation of data collection flow sheets, checklists or templates
- Evaluation and learning from data
- A team approach to care
- Patient self-management support for these conditions
- Other tips:
- Use prospective data collection (collect data concurrently instead of retrospectively)
- Some measurement sets, such as the PCPI, have corresponding flow sheets
- Manage the registry
- Address team development
- Have the right systems in place to achieve high performance
- Report performance measures efficiently
- Maximize available quality incentive bonuses
- Use prospective data collection (collect data concurrently instead of retrospectively)
Performance Measurement and P4P
Suggested Measures for Family Medicine
