Examine secondary health data for documentation motivation

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about the perennial question of how to get to good ‘ole physicians to “buy-in” to the CDI system. Like my fellow blogger Sylvia Hoffman asks, “How do you get an old dog to perform new tricks?”

One way (and it seems like the government’s pretty keen on this method too) gaining popularity is another aphorism—the good ‘old carrot and stick. If physicians keep proper documentation they score better on a number of rating systems. If they don’t they (and the facilities they work for) get hit with RACs, MACs, poor ratings, decreased reimbursement, you name it. With so much incentive to improve documentation techniques you’d think it’d be a “no-brainer” wouldn’t you?

Here are four sites to keep your eye on when tracking quality trends.

HealthGrades: HealthGrades provides ratings and profiles of hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians to consumers, corporations, health plans and hospitals.

Health Care Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP): A family of healthcare databases and related software tools and products made possible by a Federal-State-Industry partnership sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

The Leapfrog Group: The Leapfrog Group is an initiative driven by organizations that buy healthcare who are working to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality, and affordability of healthcare for Americans. Organizations voluntarily report certain data requested by Leapfrog, which is then published on the Leapfrog Web site.

Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration: The demonstration involves the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) partnership with Premier Inc., a nationwide organization of not-for-profit hospitals, and will reward participating top performing hospitals by increasing their payment for Medicare patients.