A new report signals continued growth in value-based care and other quality initiatives, including an estimated 4-percent annual increase in value-based payments and an estimated 7-percent average annual increase in participation in major clinical registry programs.
The report, from healthcare quality solutions company Q-Centrix, specifically examined quality program participation and resource needs across three main areas of healthcare quality reporting: regulatory, infection prevention, and clinical registries.
The report estimated the percentage of all care delivery associated with value-based payment to reach 22 percent by the start of 2019 – comprising nearly a quarter of all care delivery payments and up from 18 percent at the start of 2018. It also projected the number of hospitals submitting data to the top-20 major inpatient clinical registries to grow from 18,432 in 2017 to 23,773 in 2021—an average annual increase of 7 percent.
The report further showed that four of the five most-participated-in registries in 2017 focused on care and/or processes related to cardiovascular disease, and that the American College of Surgeons Cancer registry topped the list in 2017 with 5,039 facilities participating it in it.
“This latest quality industry report suggests growth in value-based payments is expected to continue amid an ever-evolving quality reporting environment,” Q-Centrix CEO Milton Silva-Craig said in a statement. “As changes in best medical practices and government regulation and policy updates influence annual additions and removals of performance measures, and hospitals’ desires around performance improvement shift, it is critical we gain a clearer understanding of facility involvement with respect to quality reporting…”
Silva-Craig added, “Clinical registries are widely considered by clinicians and healthcare quality experts to be the gold standard in clinical quality data. The fact that the top five most-participated-in registries address the nation’s two deadliest diseases is a strong clue that hospitals and healthcare providers are eager to ensure they are providing the highest quality of care in these specialties, which have a significant impact on public health.”
Other notable findings in the report include:
- State level registries continue to emerge; the latest data indicates there are 23 programs active across eight states.
- The average time it takes to abstract health record data for reporting to registries that have recently transitioned to newer versions of their data collection forms has increased 19 percent in the last two years.
- Certain registries are intensifying data collection requirements, increasing the complexity of registry participation, while at the same time average spending per hospital on registry abstraction services is rising.
The report also highlighted a potential need for more infection preventionists (IPs). In 2017, 750 hospitals saw their Medicare reimbursements lowered. A comparison in the report of the number of U.S. hospital beds and older and newer IP staffing recommendations suggests there is a potential shortage of approximately 5,400 IPs across U.S. hospitals.
