Using Quality Against You

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The new quality indicators are about to get insane and it makes me so happy they I will a part of it.  That being said, the government has done one thing right.

A provision in a House-passed bill to repeal the sustainable growth rate “would provide” physicians “new protections against medical malpractice lawsuits.” The measure, which passed with bipartisan support, “requires the government to measure the quality of care that doctors provide and rate their performance on a scale of zero to 100.” It protects physicians “by stipulating that the quality-of-care standards used in federal health programs — Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — cannot be used in malpractice cases.” AMA President Robert M. Wah, MD, “said that federal guidelines and quality criteria ‘should not be exploited to invent new legal actions against physicians.’”

How sad is the fact that they already saw the malpractice lawyers licking their chops over this quality data?  In fact, it worried them so much that they needed to pass a law to protect doctors from them.  Well, while we are on it, how about laws protecting doctors from insurance companies rating doctors lower under the guise of quality when it really is about cost?  This data can be manipulated and exploited in so many ways that it is scary.  And the worst thing?  It is has NEVER been proven to really benefit patients.