Opinion: A health care paradox: measuring and reporting quality has become a barrier to improving it

We are at an inflection point in our efforts to measure the quality of U.S. health care. Most medical professionals accept that rigorous quality measurement is essential to improving care and fundamental to transitioning the way we pay for health care. The question we face now is this: How should we measure quality in meaningful and efficient ways?

The answer could either smooth the transformation to a value-based delivery and payment system or continue to allow performance measurement to impose a significant roadblock to this transition to value.

I say “we” because physicians and other health care providers share ownership of this issue with patients, payers, to representatives of all four groups, Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called out the growing tension between patient-centered care and the administrative burdens that measurement imposes on physicians, hospitals, and health systems. Her diagnosis was spot on.