Joe No offense but I hope you are joking. This is the problem with where medicine is heading. Having small offices becoming collection stations for tons of data that may or may not prove to be relavent one day is some study, just so we can get paid the rates we used to get paid before all this extra busy work and tech is just insane. And then compiling that data is some central server for other to access and use no less. And usless collected under "controlled" circumstances of a proper research study, at best such data might make for an interesting "Meta Analysis" one day.
I think if something like AC ever tried to get so micro level, then it just wouldn't be AC anymore. There is data, and then there is data. And then just look at the title of the thread; P4P! I want people out of my office and out of my doctor's and patients charts, not deeper in them. This movement is all bull just like HMO's. P4P is not about outcomes. Because real research that is relavent to outcomes takes lots of really good statistical number crunching with properly designed experimental models and questions that eliminate all of the possible sources of bias. The collection of the data itself is not controlled or double blind, so just how relavent or accurate can it be??? But now your reimbursement is going to be affected by it anyway??? Now that's BULLCHITT.
The gov't and carriers don't really care about that, they just want a nail to hang their hats on, so as to withold more of your payments. Such really good studies need to be reproduced over and over again is properly peer reviewed journals that have no bias of their own we would hope (I've lost my faith in the AMA and most of the other specialty societies and boards). And in the end the outcomes measured in P4P are mostly influenced by personal behavior. Be it lab values for sugar, cholesterol, BP, sensation loss caused by diabetic neuropathy. I can't make you buy healthy food or cook it tonight. You insurance carrier wants you on the older cheaper med, not the one my doc wrote and you just hit the fastfood drive thru on the way home.
And you all thought I was just some darn fool practice manager. I studied a hell of a lot of stats and experimental methods as a Pysch major years ago.
Sorry for screaming, but P4P just really gets my goat.
Have a good night.
Paul
