Friday, April 29, 2022

Very Brief Blog: 3 Articles Critical of Quality System Campaigns

 A couple weeks ago, I highlighted a Rosenbaum article in NEJM on "Metric Myopia" (do metrics pull attention to a few things while other issues go unattended).  Blog here.

Let me quickly tie three articles together, from the last couple weeks.

  • In NEJM April 20, Lisa Rosenbaum writes, "Metric Myopia - Trading Away our Clinical Judgement."  Here.
  • Pair that this week with an NEJM April 28 article, also by Lisa Rosenbaum, "Reassessing Quality Assessment - A Flawed System for Fixing a Flawed System."  Here.
  • And I'd make this a triple play, yet again in NEJM, by adding in Elizabeth Rourke's April 7 article, "Ten Years of Choosing Wisely to Reduce Low-Value Care," which in part argues that nominated topics are too often figureheads that are either low cost or rare or practiced by somebody else.  Here.
    • See similarly a January 6 article in HEALIO, here.
    • HEALIO pivots off a December 2021 article in JAMA IM by Ganguli et al. here.
Regarding "Reassessing Quality Assessment," see complaints by major organizations like IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America) that review of a quality measure, SEP1 or NQF-500, was poorly handled by NQF - here.  Coverage also at MedPageToday, here

Regarding the Rosenbaum series, see part 3 also, "Peers and Professionalism," here.