The much talked about "pay-for-performance" style of reimbursement system is still largely untested and is not designed to reap cost savings, "particularly since most of the quality measures it targets are of underuse," Meredith B. Rosenthal, Ph.D., of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, said during testimony before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
In addition, there is little guidance in the literature for purchasers and health plans to reference when they set out to design their pay-for-performance programs.
"If only a few of the many payers that a provider contracts with are paying for performance, or if each payer focuses on a different measure set, the effects of pay for performance may be dulled." She suggested that Congress fund more research by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify approaches that would improve this method's cost-effectiveness and increase the likely gains in quality of care.