Pay-for-performance as a method to establish the business case for quality.

One of the major reasons providers give for not implementing promising quality-enhancing interventions (QEI) is that no "business case" for quality has been made. This article clarifies the concepts of the business case for quality and the related economic case for quality and identifies the perspectives of the various actors in health care financing, production, and consumption decisions. A methodology to evaluate the business case for quality from the perspective of payers and providers is presented.

Return on investment in pay for performance: a diabetes case study.

With purchasers' increasing frustration with healthcare costs, more innovative approaches to performance-based reimbursement are in demand. Establishing pay-for-performance programs has become a popular strategy for reorienting payments from rewarding volume to rewarding adherence to performance measures. However, while performance on quality measures has improved, no reports exist about the return on investment (ROI) of pay-for-performance programs.

Physician reactions to quantitative individual performance reports.

The purpose of this study was to learn how primary care physicians experienced the introduction and evolution of an individual physician pay-for-performance program. Thirty primary care physicians participated in audiotaped focus groups 13 and 26 months after beginning the program. Transcribed audiotapes were used to group comments into themes.

Prognostic gene expression signatures can be measured in tissues collected in RNAlater preservative.

Gene expression signatures have the ability to serve in both prognostic and predictive capacities in patient management. The use of RNA as the starting material and the lability of this analyte, however, dictate that tissues must be snap-frozen or stored in a solution that can maintain the integrity of the RNA. We compared pairs of snap-frozen and RNAlater preservative-suspended tissue from 30 such paired lymph node-negative breast tumors and 21 such paired Dukes' B colon tumors.