Tips for obtaining quality metrics and easing physician overload

Four changes that can improve the value of quality metrics. Physicians across America are bogged down with paperwork. We are adrift in a sea of data without a common standard of meaningful metrics. Unfortunately, many of the metrics we do collect do not measure meaningful measures of quality-not for physicians, not for the healthcare system, and certainly not for patients. Something needs to change. The Council of Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP), a coalition of integrated medical groups and health systems involving 30-plus organizations and tens of thousands of physicians, believes there is a better way to arrive at the quality measurement goals our healthcare system needs-one that will lessen the burden on physicians and re-focus office visits on the patient, where the attention should be. According to a 2016 Health Affairs article, medical practices report that their physicians and staff spend more than 785 hours per physician per year dealing with external quality measures-an amount of time that would care for an additional nine patients per week.