Does Hospital-Based Pay for Performance Affect Mortality?

Pay for performance (P4P) makes intuitive sense: Paying for superior care should drive quality and presumably improve patient outcomes. But although data suggest that P4P improves processes of care, whether it improves clinical outcomes is unclear. Researchers examined this question by comparing Medicare data for 250 hospitals participating in Medicare's Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) to data from more than 3300 hospitals that participated in public reporting alone (non-Premier). Data were analyzed for more than 6 million patients discharged with acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, or pneumonia or who underwent coronary-artery bypass grafting.

Thirty-day mortality rates in the Premier and non-Premi…