Paying physicians based on clinical outcomes can get complicated. Why? Because it involves holding you accountable not only for your actions, but for what your patients do as well.
Over the last several months, federal officials have been taking heat for tying incentive payments for the use of electronic health records (EHRs) to patient behavior.
Alicia Ault/IMNG Medical Media
Dr. Farzard Mostashari
Under Stage 2 requirements for the meaningful use of EHRs, physicians are required to use secure messaging to communicate with patients and to give them the ability to view, download, and transmit their health information online.
But you’ll only get paid if at least 5% of the patients you see log on to your portal.
Dr. Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, defended the new patient engagement requirements at a conference in Washington, D.C. While the push-back from doctors is understandable, he said, the only way that the U.S. health care system can achieve higher quality at lower cost is to get patients much more involved than they are today.
Patient engagement is one of the most underutilized resources in health care, he said. "If it were a drug, it would be a blockbuster," Dr. Mostashari said.
You have a significant influence over your patients’ engagement. With some tweaks to office work flow, you should be able to steer patients toward these new options, according to Dr. Mostashari. Quite simply: Remind patients about your portal and messaging system every time you see them. If you do so, you should not have a problem meeting the 5% threshold, he added.
And for those who are successful in getting patients to look at their health information online, there’s another reward: Patients make the best fact checkers, Dr. Mostashari said.