Quality Fusion Cuisine

The article in the print magazine, Family Practice News, was called:

Fusing Quality Measure and Primary Care

I immediately was drawn to it just as a fly would be drawn to a fresh turd. The title wants to romanticize this garbage by making into some avant-garde fusion cuisine.  How sexy.   The online version is called Integrating behavioral health into primary care which is weird because it has nothing to do with the article. Nice editorial work, FPN.

To be clear, the quality measure fad should be over by now.  The evidence doesn’t prove it. In fact, it is against it.  But this guy, Theodore Ganiats, MD, seems to ignore all the studies because he is smarter than all of us.  But I digress.

The article starts off:

This is the sixth in a series of articles from the National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

This has got to be a joke title, right?  Read that again. He may as well call it the Ministry of Silly Walks.

But there’s more:

One resource is the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse (NQMC). The NQMC is a database and website for information on specific evidence-based health care quality measures and measure sets, sponsored by AHRQ to promote widespread access to quality measures by the health care community and other interested individuals. For each measure that meets NQMC criteria for inclusion, the site provides structured, standardized summaries that contain information about measures and their development. A dedicated team prepares these summaries using the NQMC Template of Measure Attributes and associated Domain Framework, Glossary Classification Scheme, Naming Convention, and Measure Hierarchy.

It is the Ministry of Silly Walks! (YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE)

He ends his article with this:

The NQMC mission is to provide an accessible mechanism for obtaining detailed information on quality measures and to further the dissemination, implementation, and use of these measures to inform health care decisions. NQMC is designed for practitioners, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers, and others interested in health care quality measurement. Funding for the NQMC is in question, and the future of this resource is not certain.

Yes!! His organization is on the ropes!  I get it now.  He is begging for help because he is their director and may be out of a job. Well, I for one say, “Don’t let the quality door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

Be well, Dr. Ganiats.

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