Skip to content

Continuity of Care QPP Measures

Introducing continuity of care measures to the Quality Payment Program (QPP) may be the best route to lower healthcare costs and reduce hospitalizations according to a study recently published in the Annals of Family Medicine. Provider-level measures that support value-based payments by measuring true continuity of care have been lacking thus far in QPP. This led Dr. Andrew Bazemore to develop, and test 4 provider-level, claims-based continuity measures on over 1.4 million Medicare beneficiaries.  The results showed providers with the highest level of continuity were 14.1% lower in cost than those in the lowest quintile. In addition to the cost savings, the odds of merely being hospitalized decreases 16.1% for providers with a high continuity of care score.

Researchers utilized four established measures, the Usual Provider Continuity (UPC) Index, Bice-Boxerman Continuity of Care, Modified Modified Continuity Index (MMCI), and the Herfindahl Index (HI) to then create an average across provider-level patient panels. The strong correlation between these continuity of care measurements and both clinical and fiscal outcomes, builds a strong case for supporting further focus on care continuity with providers and clinical teams. This may not be all that surprising to primary care providers, as a stronger patient relationship is often given credit for better care. However, this is a big win in terms of bridging the gap between a world of healthcare dominated by data and the real world of complex dynamics between patients, providers, and individual life circumstances.

The applicability and ease-of-reporting for these four measures is astounding in comparison to the barrage of primary-care centric measures currently in QPP. Researchers noted, “Primary care has the largest number of QPP measures but most of these are intermediate, disease-focused, and process measures, which risk driving primary care focus away from its core functions and real value.”

As value-based payments continue to snowball into effect, support for reasonable, applicable measures that bring minimal reporting burden is encouraged. To learn more, please see the Meaningful Measures Initiative here.

Back To Top
Search