December 2006 · Vol. 18, No. 12Pay for performance:
We’ll be better off
How P4P benefits our practices and our patients
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Fast Track
P4P is a certainty for many of us. That means someone is defining the measures by which we’ll be judged—it might as well be us
With a 7% enhancement and $1 million annual collection, you could get a bonus of $70,000
Make no mistake: patients will go to the “better” doctors
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Mark
DeFrancesco,
MD, MBAChief Medical Officer, Women’s Health Connecticut, Avon, Conn
Assistant Clinical Professor, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Conn
Member, Board of Directors, Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC)
Member, Board of Trustees, AAAHC Institute of Quality Improvement (IQI)
Chair, IQI’s P4P Task Force
Like everything else, Pay for Performance (P4P) has inherent rewards and risks. For our patients, rewards include improved clinical care and outcomes, and for us, enhanced earnings. Among potential risks are a failure to earn higher compensation if we don’t participate in a voluntary P4P program, and/or finding our practices excluded from “preferred” status as more plans move toward tiered networks. P4P might be one way a plan decides which practices to include in a preferred network, advertising only practices that meet the “higher standards” of P4P.
Like it or not, P4P programs are already a reality for many of us, and their continued proliferation seems inevitable. This article describes the typical trajectory of a P4P program, the importance of being involved in program design as early as possible, and the challenges and successes of P4P thus far.
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