Premier, a health alliance of more than 200 nonprofit hospitals and health care systems, recently released results from its pay-for-performance demonstration project with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The new data suggests that implementing pay-for-performance measures could result in saving thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pay-for-performance requires that health care providers adhere to a certain standard of care in order to be eligible for the highest levels of compensation.
It, therefore, relies upon a substantial data collection and analysis efforts.
In this particular analysis, Premier examined several specific illnesses and procedures including pneumonia, heart bypass, heart attack (acute myocardial infarction), and hip and knee replacement patients.
If all the patients with these conditions received most or all of widely accepted care process in 2004, they are projecting it would have resulted in nearly 5,700 fewer deaths and saved $1.35 billion in hospital costs.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Study: Pay for Performance Could Save Lives, Money