Dr. Helen Burstin emphasizes the ongoing need for significant change in healthcare, particularly regarding how equity is integrated into quality measurement. She expresses concern that, while there has been incremental progress, the industry requires a stronger focus on embedding equity into quality assessments. Dr. Burstin advocates for improved data systems to analyze and understand disparities arising from structural racism and other social determinants.

Quality in healthcare, according to Dr. Burstin, involves ensuring that every patient receives the right care at the right time. She highlights that quality metrics should lead to tangible improvements in patient care rather than serving as mere checklists for physicians. A case she shares demonstrates the importance of aligning quality measures with meaningful patient interactions, as seen in the revision of a referral measure to reflect actual patient outcomes.

Key challenges in developing meaningful quality measures arise from the current measures often failing to add value, leading to clinician burnout. Dr. Burstin stresses the need to eliminate ineffective measures and proposes leveraging existing successful measures in developing new ones. She suggests that integrating measure development into clinical guideline updates would result in more relevant and impactful quality metrics.

Furthermore, Dr. Burstin highlights the success of registries created by clinicians for clinicians, which can yield real-time data to facilitate quality improvement. She advocates for collaboration across primary and specialty care sectors to define measures that genuinely enhance patient outcomes and experiences.

Key Takeaways:

• Equity in Quality Measurement: Dr. Burstin calls for a stronger integration of equity into healthcare quality measures, addressing disparities rooted in social determinants and structural racism.
• Value-Driven Metrics: Quality metrics should focus on meaningful patient interactions and outcomes rather than mere compliance, reducing the burden of ineffective measures on healthcare professionals.
• Collaborative Approach: A unified effort between primary care and specialty care sectors is essential to develop relevant measures that improve patient care and experience, leveraging existing successful metrics and real-time data from clinician-led registries.

Direct Quote:

“Instead of starting from scratch for every new measure, we should leverage existing measures that have already shown effectiveness in practice.” — Dr. Helen Burstin