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Assessing The Effectiveness Of Peer Comparisons As A Way To Improve Health Care Quality.

Navathe AS, Volpp KG, Bond AM, Linn KA, Caldarella KL, Troxel AB, Zhu J, Yang L, Matloubieh SE, Drye EE, Bernheim SM, Oshima Lee E, Mugiishi M, Endo KT, Yoshimoto J, Emanuel EJ. Assessing The Effectiveness Of Peer Comparisons As A Way To Improve Health Care Quality. Health affairs (Project Hope). 2020 May 1; 39(5):852-861.

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Abstract:

Policy makers are increasingly using performance feedback that compares physicians to their peers as part of payment policy reforms. However, it is not known whether peer comparisons can improve broad outcomes, beyond changing specific individual behaviors such as reducing inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawaii to examine the impact of providing peer comparisons feedback on the quality of care to primary care providers in the setting of a shift from fee-for-service to population-based payment. Over 74,000 patients and eighty-eight primary care providers across sixty-three sites were included over a period of nine months in 2016. Patients in the peer comparisons intervention group experienced a 3.1-percentage-point increase in quality scores compared to the control group-whose members received individual feedback only. This result underscores the effectiveness of peer comparisons as a way to improve health care quality, and it supports Medicare''s decisions to provide comparative feedback as part of recently implemented primary care and specialty payment reform programs.




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