http://altarum.org/health-policy-blog/measuring-what-really-matters

Not everything that is important for a person’s health can be measured and not everything that can be measured in health care is important to the average person.

For too long, value has been defined only for the benefit of regulators and purchasers. Our health care system is purpose-built to cater to their performance needs, oversight, and expectations, and as such has fostered the proliferation of all sorts of clinical quality measures by multiple organizations. The current state of quality measurement serves these audiences reasonably well.

However, the problem with evaluating quality using these tools is twofold. First as a physician, I still see too much variation in the technical quality of American health care. Second, clinical measures alone ignore how value is perceived through the eyes of those who actually use the delivery system. When we look at the highest users of health care – those with serious medical problems and functional limitations – we now have an abundance of technical measures for each condition on their problem list, and yet really no understanding of whether we are contributing to a person’s quality of life. Frankly, I care little about the fact that my 100-year-old grandmother has never had a screening colonoscopy, but I care mightily that no one seems responsible for her successful discharge and transition home after a bout of urosepsis.

We cannot improve what we do not measure…and it is time to start measuring health care from the vantage point of those needing care, not just for those who provide and pay for it. And if we are to achieve the dramatic improvements anticipated through new payment and service delivery models, the mushrooming of purely clinical measures must be thinned out to make room for a new generation of metrics that consider outcomes from the person’s perspective.