Featured blog post: How much health did you make today?

Two articles in the August 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine highlight the difficulty in assessing the work product of physicians. The first article, “Quality Measures and the Individual Physician,” describes the difficulties encountered by a primary care physician, Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, in achieving desirable scores on process measures, such as glycohemoglobin and blood pressure.

The second article, “Accountability Measures—Using Measurement to Promote Quality Improvement” (by Mark Chassin and others) outlines a method for ensuring the validity of measures used by regulatory agencies. Many of us find ourselves in a predicament similar to Dr. Ofri—measured against processes that she is seemingly unable to influence. Incentives are proliferating in hospital medicine and most are based on compliance with various aspects of evidence-based medicine. Does this actually make patients healthier? I do not know.

To read more of this blog post by Richard Rohr, MD, MMM, FACPE, FHM, visit MedicalStaffLeader.com.