Rethinking Medicare Payment Adjustments for Quality

Payment reforms aimed at linking payment and quality have largely been based on the adherence to process measures. As a result, the attempt to pay for value is getting lost in an overly complex attempt to measure value. The “Incentivizing Health Care Quality Outcomes Act of 2014” (HR 5823) proposes to replace the existing patchwork of process and outcomes quality measures with a uniform, coordinated, and comprehensive outcomes-based quality measurement system. The Outcomes Act represents a shift in payment policy toward getting value instead of an increasingly complex attempt to measure value.