New data: Average primary care physician faces meeting 57 different quality measures each year

The study from Providence and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, published in JAMA Health Forum, indicates that burden of quality measures may be counterproductive in patient care, suggests possible need for intervention

Renton, Wash. (Aug. 23, 2024) – A study released today from researchers at Providence and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business suggests that the oversaturation of the health care quality measure environment is adding to the administrative burden placed on providers and may be leading to unintended consequences, such as physician burnout. The results of the study were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum. 

Using employment contract data from 2020 to 2022 on 890 primary care physicians employed by Providence, an integrated health system located across seven West Coast states, along with the payer contracts associated with their attributed patients, researchers found that the average physician was incentivized to meet 57.1 different quality measures annually. 

“The goal of value-based contracting is to incentivize care improvement but optimizing against 50 or more quality measures isn’t realistic for busy clinicians,” said Ari Robicsek, M.D., chief analytics and research officer at Providence. “We need to simplify.” 

From 2020 to 2022, the average number of value-based contracts per physicians increased from 9.4 to 12.3, according to the study. Researchers also found that Medicare contracts had more quality measures on average (13.4) than commercial (10.1) or Medicaid (5.4) contracts, and that the mean number of quality measures in Medicare contracts increased from 2020 to 2022.

As payers shift toward value-based contracts, this study highlights the need for additional work to bring the industry’s aspiration of high-quality care into alignment with the reality of clinical practice. 

About Providence
Providence is a national, not-for-profit Catholic health system comprising a diverse family of organizations and driven by a belief that health is a human right. With 51 hospitals, more than 1,100 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing, and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ more than 129,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states – Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, with system offices in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif. Learn about our vision of health for a better world at Providence.org.