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Order sets, checklists help hospital achieve P4P success

Quality Improvement Monitor, May 11, 2007

It's called pay for performance, but the incentive program has less to do with financial gain than providing excellent patient care, according to one participant in the CMS/Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration project.

"We never approached it with the pay-for-performance mindset," says Pam Pringle, RN, director of clinical practice at Fairview Northland Medical Center in Princeton, MN.

"We knew that the goal of CMS was to be able to reward organizations that met particular measures.But we always approached it from the best-practice, evidence-based perspective. We wanted to do what was best for the patient," she says.

Fairview, a 54-bed hospital, received $20,000 for scoring in the top deciles for care of patients with heart failure and acute myocardial infarction.

"Part of our strategy, and part of the strategy at Fairview as a whole, was to develop order sets for core measures," says Linda Walker, RN, nurse clinician. "This way, the physicians and nurses do not have to remember the specific components of the core measures, as these are already included in the order sets."

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