Clinical question: Do individual provider feedback and a pay-for-performance incentive program improve the use of guideline-compliant VTE prophylaxis?
Background: The appropriate use of VTE prophylaxis is a Joint Commission core measure set, a publicly reported performance metric for quality care, and part of the hospital value-based purchasing component of healthcare reform. Despite guidelines on effective and safe measures to prevent VTE, compliance rates are often below 50%.
Study design: Retrospective analysis.
Setting: Academic hospitalists at a tertiary care medical center.
Synopsis: Using a web-based, transparent dashboard and a pay-for-performance program with graduated payouts, this analysis showed a significant improvement in VTE compliance rates by providers. Specifically, the combination of both interventions yielded the highest rate. The monthly compliance rate increased from a baseline of 86% (95% confidence interval [CI], 85-88%) to 90% (95% CI, 88-93%) with the dashboard alone (P=0.001) and was further augmented to 94% (95% CI, 93-96%) with the combined dashboard and payment incentive program (P=0.001).
This study highlights the impact of both intrinsic (peer norms) and extrinsic (payments) motivation, as they work synergistically to improve VTE compliance rates.
Bottom line: Transparent feedback through real-time dashboards and performance-based payment incentives can be used to bring about significant improvement in patient safety and quality benchmarks.
Citation: Michtalik HJ, Carolan HT, Haut ER, et al. Use of provider-level dashboards and pay-for-performance in venous thromboembolism prophylaxis. J Hosp Med. 2015;10(3):172-178.