Performance Improvement

 I’m proud of the way I practice medicine. I feel like I performed my job well. My patients often seemed happy and grateful. Quite often, my first new appointments were six weeks out, so my referring colleagues seemed to have faith in me.

However, I have noticed that the measurement of performance success has changed over the years. First, online reviews started to pop up for physicians just like they did for other service providers. Those reviews were generally good – although quite subjective. Every once in a while, I received a poor rating from a patient I never even saw. Perhaps, a staff member was busy taking a phone call and couldn’t give the person an appointment.

Now, physicians are measured in many different ways by various stakeholders, and specific metrics are selected to measure how effectively we provide high quality care. Payors want to know if we’ve completed certain tasks to ensure we achieve disease prevention and maximize treatment outcomes.

So, where can I see my grade? How did I perform compared with my peers?

In medicine, like in life, opportunities to improve are always present, and ACHN strives for transparency. We provide network-level, quality metrics to all of our stakeholders in our annual Value Report. We also provide individual physician performance through our subnetworks and their physician-level scorecards.

As quality measurements become a bit more objective, performance improvement remains a challenge. We must take the time to look at how we compare to our past performance, our peers, other physicians in the market, and colleagues around the nation. We must always strive to improve our past performance in our practice by learning from each other. Our patients are depending on us.

 James Goldenberg, MD, FAAN, Medical Director of Atlantic Coast Health Network
and Medical Director of Memorial Healthcare Network