Once again, I called it!
Some of my previous takes on the fallacies of “Quality”:
The biggest mistake made by Medicare, private insurers, and other entities seeking to improve medical care by rewarding “quality” is mistaking it for “performance”.
The real reason doctors have begun “requiring” that patients undergo all manner of screening interventions is to enhance their compliance ratios. After all, the quickest way to get to 100% is to get rid of everyone who falls short.
Now it’s moved to hospitals:
Hospitals are throwing out organs and denying transplants to meet federal standards
Yes, you read that right:
Hospitals across the United States are throwing away less-than-perfect organs and denying the sickest people lifesaving transplants out of fear that poor surgical outcomes will result in a federal crackdown.
As a result, thousands of patients are losing the chance at surgeries that could significantly prolong their lives, and the altruism of organ donation is being wasted.
“It’s gut-wrenching and mind-boggling,” said Dr. Adel Bozorgzadeh, a transplant surgeon at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass.
Go ahead and read the whole thing.
CMS’s latest push to revamp Medicare payment systems to reward “Quality”, a word never defined except in terms of dollars and cents, has an excellent chance of being the final straw that breaks the back of medical care in America.
Un-***ing-believable!
Musings of a Dinosaur 
Annd the sound you hear in the background is the gods of unintended consequences laughing.
By: mamadoc on August 12, 2016
at 11:00 pm
This is shocking.
By: Jackie on August 13, 2016
at 2:18 am
But entirely un***ing predictable. As you did. I predict there will be eventually an army of folks with high A1Cs, etc whom no doctor will see and they will wander the face of the earth
By: Mamadoc on August 30, 2016
at 11:06 pm
[…] calculate bonus payments as “incentives” for “Quality” care. The only problem is that, as I’ve written before, all of their “Quality” measures are in fact nothing but proxies for cost, most […]
By: I am a Terrible Doctor, I’m Proud of it | by Lucy Hornstein - The Doctors Post on May 18, 2018
at 2:07 pm