Will How Well You Document Determine Your Quality Ranking?

We all know that the best doctors in the world are determined by how well that doctor documents the visit.
-Said No Doctor Ever!

Seriously, it’s an absurd claim that the quality of a doctor’s documentation would be how we rank the quality of a doctor. I’m sure just reading the headline probably pissed you off. I was upset just typing it. We all know that there are a lot of great doctors who are really awful at documenting. We know there are some awful doctors that’s documentation looks beautiful.

Since we all know this is the case why would I ask the absurd question about a doctor’s documentation determining their quality rating? Because I can see a path where we head this direction.

Yes, it’s scary to consider, but that’s why it’s so important that we consider it. I think this could be the impact of the quality reporting scores that come from MACRA/MIPS/APMs. It seems like it’s only just a matter of time before these scores will hit the Physician Compare website.

Don’t be surprised if they’re also made publicly available so that every health rating site on the internet pulls them down from CMS and uses them as one more factor in how they determine the highest quality doctors. If you don’t believe this will happen, then you haven’t followed what they’ve done with other CMS data.

Remember that these websites don’t have to have actual quality data. They just have to show the perception of quality data. Most consumers aren’t smart enough (or diligent enough) to know the difference. In fact, CMS itself calls it quality data, so they’ll be able to use that word freely. Imagine the doctor who gets ranked lower because their MIPS quality score was lower or non-existent because they have a small Medicare population or because they chose not to participate in the program. This is not a far fetched idea and is a fear I’ve heard from many health systems.

It’s too bad we don’t have a real way to measure quality. Then, we’d all want that data to be shared. However, I’m close to the conclusion that you can’t truly measure clinical quality. At least not in any scalable way. I’m hoping one day we’ll get there, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Until then, companies will use whatever perception of quality they can find and many high quality doctors will suffer because of it.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • John, you raise excellent concerns. Quality data comes from clinical codes assigned and documented outcomes. And yes, those both come from physician / clinical documentation.

    It’s a bit of a journey for their documentation, but in the end it is critical that all docs (and their EMRs) do a better job of documenting care.

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