Financial incentive schemes in primary care

Protocol for evaluation of enhanced models of primary care in the management of stroke and other chronic disease (PRECISE): A data linkage healthcare evaluation study

INTRODUCTION

The growing burden of chronic diseases means some governments have been providing financial incentives for multidisciplinary care and self-management support delivered within primary care. Currently, population-based evaluations of the effectiveness of these policies are lacking.

AIM

To outline the methodological approach for our study that is designed to evaluate the effectiveness (including cost) of primary care policies for chronic diseases in Australia using stroke as a case study.

METHODS

Person-level linkages will be undertaken between registrants from the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry (AuSCR) and (i) Government-held Medicare Australia claims data, to identify receipt or not of chronic disease management and care coordination primary care items; (ii) state government-held hospital data, to define outcomes; and (iii) government-held pharmaceutical and aged care claims data, to define covariates. N=1500 randomly selected AuSCR registrants will be sent surveys to obtain patient experience information. In Australia, unique identifiers are unavailable. Therefore, personal-identifiers will be submitted to government data linkage units. Researchers will merge the de-identified datasets for analysis using a project identifier. An economic evaluation will also be undertaken.

ANALYSIS

The index event will be the first stroke recorded in the AuSCR. Multivariable competing risks Poisson regression for multiple events, adjusted by a propensity score, will be used to test for differences in the rates of hospital presentations and medication adherence for different care (policy) types. Our estimated sample size of 25,000 patients will provide 80% estimated power (ɑ>0.05) to detect a 6-8% difference in rates. The incremental costs per Quality-adjusted life years gained of community-based care following the acute event will be estimated from a health sector perspective.

CONCLUSION

Completion of this study will provide a novel and comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Australian primary care policies. Its success will enable us to highlight the value of data-linkage for this type of research.

MIPS in Residency? A Look at Merit-Based Incentives in an Internal Medicine Residency Outpatient Practice

BACKGROUND

In January 2017, full implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) inspired us to introduce a similar incentivized model of value-based care into our internal medicine residency's outpatient practice.

OBJECTIVE

To provide real-world experience in a value-based payment practice model, we provided monetary incentives to internal medicine residents for meeting inbox management expectations, timely reporting, and improvement in clinical outcome measures.

METHODS

Thirty-seven residents were divided into 6 teams. Over a 5-month period, clinical goals were to reduce by 5% each teams' average number of patients with diabetes who had HbA1c > 9% and to raise by 10% the number of diabetes patients at target blood pressure. Goals for inbox management were established: all forms, notes, medication refills, and patient requests were expected to be complete at the end of each week. Teams received monetary bonuses based on compliance with reporting, management of inboxes, and progress toward clinical outcome goals.

RESULTS

Every team improved their patients' blood pressure; however, no one reached the 10% target. Every team improved their patients' average HbA1c, and 2 teams surpassed the 5% goal. All teams met their weekly reporting goal, and half completed the inbox management tasks 100% of the time. Of the 26 participants who completed the survey, 22 (85%) favored continuing the program.

CONCLUSIONS

Providing monetary incentives in a team-based internal medicine residency model improved patient outcome measures and provided real-world exposure to incentivized value-based care.