New OPPE and FPPE standards for acute care and critical access hospitals accredited by the Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP) may look somewhat familiar to many hospitals. Most facilities conduct competence assessment and peer evaluation in one form or another. Now, however, they...
Physicians at all levels need to balance the potential benefits of a given medical treatment with its harms and costs, keeping in mind the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. This practice, known as high-value care, has been gaining attention as the public becomes more aware of...
Physicians and hospitals are being evaluated on myriad quality metrics, with results increasingly tied to financial penalties or bonuses. But payers, providers, and patients don’t always agree on what “quality” means, and there is no official set of standards. In a recent Wall Street...
As hospitals acquire more physician offices, patients are often paying more, not less, for their care. At the heart of the disparity is Medicare’s policy of paying one price to independent physicians and another to physicians who work for large health systems—even if they are performing the...
