External Incentives, Information Technology, and Organized Processes to Improve Health Care Quality for Patients With Chronic Diseases

Abstract

Recent reports, including 2 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences, argue that the quality of health care in the United States falls far short of biomedical knowledge and that this gap in quality is primarily a failure of organization, rather than of individual physicians.^1-7 The IOM and others have called for the implementation of organized processes to improve quality and have argued that government and large private purchasers of health care should provide physician organizations (POs) with incentives to implement such processes.^8-14 The IOM also has advocated government financial assistance to POs to improve their clinical information technology (IT), which is considered fundamental to organized attempts to improve quality of care.^2,15,16