Results tagged “Senate Finance Committee” from Innovations

Bigger Rewards -- And Stronger Penalties -- May Help Improve Health Care Quality, Experts Say

September 10, 2008 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

by Mary Agnes Carey, CQ Staff

Paying health care providers more to do quality work and insisting they abide by a set of minimum quality standards would go a long way toward improving the quality of medical care that patients receive, witnesses told the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday.

After his testimony, William Roper, chairman of the board of directors of the National Quality Forum, said he would tie as much as 5 to 10 percent of a provider's payment to the quality of care they delivered. Roper told the Finance panel that changing the health care industry's attitude about quality will take time but be well worth it.

Tags: Mary Agnes Carey, National Quality Forum, Senate Finance Committee, William Roper

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Budget Chief Orszag: Threats Will Hasten Health IT Adoption

July 17, 2008 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Reed Cooley, CQ Staff

The threat of financial penalties rather than the promise of incentives -- or more simply, the stick, not the carrot -- will spur providers to adopt health information technologies on the widest scale, Congressional Budget Office Director Peter R. Orszag told Congress on Thursday.

"If you want to get to near universal health IT in the near future, meaning the next five years, it's got to be the stick," Orszag said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing to examine possible improvements to quality in the U.S. health care system.

Tags: CBO, Congressional Budget Office, health IT, Peter Orszag, Reed Cooley, Senate Finance Committee

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