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AMA blasted for resisting quality-based payments

Quality Improvement Monitor, April 13, 2007

Former House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas last week lashed out at Edward L. Langston, chairman-elect of the American Medical Association, for resisting quality-based payment, according to the Commonwealth Fund's Washington Health Policy Week in Review.

The verbal exchange came at an American Enterprise Institute gathering.

"I don't know whether you wrote your comments or someone wrote them for you, but what I heard was the same old story and that is, you say there is high quality," Thomas said, according to the Commonwealth Fund publication. "You need to make sure patients have high quality. You have no measurements to determine whether that occurs or not."

Thomas shot back: "We tried for years to put in measurements for high quality." But he said he had heard "a degree of threat" from the AMA that cost-cutting would mean patients would lose service.

For more information, click here http://www.cmwf.org/healthpolicyweek/healthpolicyweek_show.htm?doc_id=473049&#doc473077

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