Commentaries Propose Ways to Improve Performance Measurement

Two commentaries published December 4, 2014, in the New England Journal of Medicine discuss how to "get more performance out of performance measures," as the authors of one commentary state. In the past few decades, healthcare has gone from expending little effort on performance measurement to expending "substantial resources" on the task. But it is unclear how much actual improvement results from all this measurement. The authors cite two cases in which measurement—with other attendant efforts—appears to have improved care on a large scale: reductions in hospital readmission rates (see the May 14, 2014, HRC Alerts) and in rates of early elective deliveries.