HCFO Study Findings Cited in Kaiser Health News Blog Post on Medicare Quality Incentive Program

On the Kaiser Health News blog, [1]Jordan Rau presented a “first look” at Medicare’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program. Rau cites findings from a study by Andrew Ryan, Ph.D., Weill Cornell Medical College, and colleagues that was the first to evaluate hospitals’ performance under the program. Drawing from his HCFO-funded study, [2]Ryan and colleagues evaluated the effect of the HVBP program on quality of care during the program’s first year of implementation and found [3]that that the financial incentives were not associated with improved quality of care. The researchers noted that, “it may take hospitals longer to respond to the financial incentives of the program.”