Metrics are a valuable way for healthcare providers to measure the value of the care they provide to their patients. All healthcare providers should continuously seek better quality metrics for their practices. They need tools capable of pinpointing the effectiveness, safety, and equity of their treatments and care.
The results of your metrics will give you vital information about which areas of your practice can be improved or streamlined. Then you will know how to modify your organizational structure to enhance patient outcomes from your treatments and procedures.
Some critics believe focusing on quality metrics is a distraction from delivering quality patient care. But what they don’t realize is that focusing on quality metrics is how you provide quality patient care. If you are trying your hardest to keep your patients healthy and alive, you need a system to measure their health with minimal consequences.
Primary Medical Care Center believes in providing quality care to patients. We operate a value-based metric model focusing on treating patients by targeting their health risk factors. Our doctors sit down with patients and discuss those risk factors in a calm and non-judgmental manner. This allows the patient to be more receptive to the advice.
Our primary care doctors have numerous discussions with patients regarding their diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices. These discussions don’t usually occur when doctors operate under a fee-based service model. But under the value-based model, our doctors have an incentive to cure patients of their unhealthy behavior rather than write them a prescription every month.
The truth is that most medical issues are effectively treatable if patients develop healthy diet, exercise, and lifestyle habits. However, all these discussions with patients must be recorded or documented for future reference. Then you can remember what you talked to specific patients about and what you have not talked to them about regarding their health.
This documented information plays into the metric-care model. It allows you to measure the value of your care and its impact on your patients between sessions. And if you failed to talk about something during a session, such as diet and exercise, you would mention it on record. Then you would know to talk about it with them next time.
The record-keeping can be simple. Just make a list of topics with checkboxes next to them on the computer. Then check the boxes next to the topics you talked to each patient about in their session. Think of it as a patient satisfaction survey.
Consider Patient Experiences
Listen to your patient’s feedback after you provide them with care services. Utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand their point of view on the treatment they received. Record their feedback as patient-reported experience measures and patient-reported outcome measures. Then you can use these measurements to assess the value of the care provided to them.
The patient outcome and experiences can help you make better care decisions for them in the future. Their experiences are particularly important because they will give you a clear understanding of how patient experiences influence the cost-effectiveness and outcomes of your treatments.
You don’t necessarily need to survey patients during a medical session. If you want to gather as much information quickly, try using a phone survey or written survey in the mail to learn about patient experiences and outcomes. Then you’ll have more metrics available to study.
Comprehensive Care
Primary care physicians can have positive outcomes in treating patients if they practice comprehensive care. In other words, the physicians must take time to address the patient’s needs and worries. Patients will feel more valued if their physicians are willing to spend more time understanding and addressing their problems directly.
The value of your care is measurable based on the steps you took to address your patient’s problems and their impact on the patient’s quality of life and longevity. Does the patient feel comfortable talking to you about their health problems? Did they follow your preventative advice?
If you answered “yes” to both questions, your value-based preventative care should stop your patients from getting readmitted to experience hospitals. It is the benefit of putting in the time and effort to understand your patient’s problems. Otherwise, under the fee-based care system, you wouldn’t spend much time with patients because you would want them to keep coming back again. That is why the value-based care model is far superior to the fee-based care system.
Healthcare metrics must incentivize healthcare providers to treat patients’ problems and improve their satisfaction with the care provided. If healthcare continues to be a transactional system, then patients will keep coming back to see the doctor over and over again about the same problems. That isn’t good for the patient. It’s only good for the doctors who profit from it.
But as an ethical doctor who wants to prioritize the value of your care, you can become more successful by putting your patients’ needs first. If more doctors adopt the same value-based care model, perhaps the healthcare industry won’t be so overpriced.
Contact Us
Would you like to learn more about value-based metrics and how they can improve the quality of care you give your patients? Contact the Primary Medical Care Center staff at (305) 751-1500 for more information.