Milton G. Silva-Craig is the CEO of Q-Centrix, LLC, the largest exclusive provider of outsourced retrospective and concurrent Core Measure and Registry data abstraction for acute care hospitals. With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare and information technology industries, Mr. Silva-Craig has demonstrated success in leading and managing high-growth businesses and institutions. Q-Centrix was welcomed into Sterling Partners’ portfolio in December 2013.
Quick — do you know where your hospital’s quality department is located?
If not, you’d better!
The submission of quality measures, once a voluntary act of leading institutions, should now be considered and treated as a critical element within a hospital’s strategic revenue plan, as measured both in hard and soft dollars.
Following the CMS playbook of driving change — voluntary, incent, require and penalize — large commercial plans have now begun to play the game and are requesting providers’ voluntary participation in the submission of certain quality measures, which are distinct and separate from the more well-known CMS measures.
From the inception of only a handful of inpatient measures to the multiple hands of measures — from outpatient, registries and physician quality reporting to hospital-acquired infections to value-based purchasing — the quality dollars reimbursement game has changed and will continue to change. Quality leaders now stand directly in the revenue path, so be sure you know the path to their office, and make sure it’s a path well-traveled!