The healthcare industry relies on the quality of instruments, knowledge, and most importantly, the performance of the many faculty members. As leaders in the industry, you know how one small mistake can cause a downward spiral of chaos. That’s why the importance and necessity of feedback and reviews are all the more potent as time goes on. However, for many years the practice of quality measures seemed to be hidden away and affected everything from billing practices to patients.

Now, a revolution is happening in the halls of medical facilities all over the country. The idea of performance management is being used to change the way hospitals are reimbursed and as a way to change provider and consumer behavior. So, how is performance management making all these changes happen? Let’s take a look:

Payment Reform

Healthcare plans seem to be changing with the seasons and it has both patients and providers a little worried and frazzled. However, this is one area where knowing the performance of your facility and staff can help gauge costs or even reimbursements. In 2015, most hospitals have reimbursed an average of 88 cents for every dollar for Medicare and 90 cents for Medicaid. However, this held true whether the actual quality of medical treatment was good or bad, which can mean more costs to patients and higher reimbursements for only sub-par medical care. Nowadays, however, things seem to be changing.

An example of this comes in from Minnesota where clinics with high performance and low cost will be reimbursed at a higher level than ones with lower performance and higher costs. This makes sense and has proven to provide a higher standard when providing patients with better care, better medicine, and an overall better healthcare experience. For example, a year by year comparison shows an increase in diabetic patients receiving proper care, treatment, and medication after performance measures were applied as a way to reform healthcare efforts.

Improving Outcomes

It’s not hard to imagine that with paying attention to performance comes a higher standard of quality and reassurance in the care that providers are giving their patients. Performance management is responsible for all of this as a way to drastically improve practices around the country. One such instance of this resulted in a 63% drop in infection rates among U.S. intensive care patients between 2001 and 2009. However, the impact and necessity doesn’t stop there. The idea of follow up information is just as important.

It is beneficial to get feedback not only from your peer and senior medical staff, but from patients as well. How was their healing? What was their stay like? Do they feel they were taken care of the best of the staff’s abilities? These are all questions to ponder when looking to enhance and improve your performance and quality of care.

Public Reporting

To keep the conversation going about patient employee feedback brings up the topic of turning these statements into actual public reports. This means, letting consumers be able to pay attention to quality measures and their outcomes. There is some debate on this topic, especially concerning how complex these measures can become. But, one thing is for sure, allowing the public to see the overall quality of an establishment holds the facility all the more responsible when it comes to performance. And, as a patient and consumer, these individuals can make better decisions that affect their health and livelihood.

“There’s a disconnect with people’s likely use of measures and what measures are there,” – Baruch College’s Sofaer

It seems that adjusting and reporting on these ever-changing measures will continue to be debated and transformed. However, progress is being made, and the transformation of our country’s medical facilities, staff members, and patients will continue to reap the benefits as we continue to get closer to offering the best quality possible.

Performance management and employee reviews aren’t just for office jobs; it has a place in all industries, including health care! Find out how iRevü has worked to bring performance management to the surface of medical facilities everywhere by checking out our latest case study!