May 3, 2024: The Importance of Measuring What You Do. In Particular, Describe the Difference Between Leading and Lagging Indicators.

Moving from Fee for Service to Prospective Payment in Primary Care: Advanced Primary Care: The Future of Primary Care – Part 10

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 You know the old phrase that insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome. In the past, we’ve focused attention on lagging indicators which are cost and utilization; things a care team is not able to change effectively. This creates a lot of frustration because the clinicians weren’t accomplishing what we wanted to.

Whereas when you think of leading indicators these are the things that lead to change the lagging indicators over time. The leading indicators are the things that will over time drive cost and utilization.

The high value visits we’re talking about that engage people and strengthen relationships are very effective with all patients but in particular the high risk people. It helps build their health literacy so they understand the “why” from the medical care plan and put it together with their personal “why”. So everyone can stay on track with all that creates a team win. You want to measure and give feedback on things that people actually can impact and change. That’s very motivating as it engages the staff. Whereas if you give the staff a bunch of lagging indicators, they don’t feel that they have any real power or control and it’s very disheartening and discouraging.

Leading indicators include things like calls answered immediately, number of High Value visits performed, the percent of your panel seen in a timely fashion, gaps in care closed, HCC Codes documented. Lagging indicators include: Panel Size, Health Risks of Patients seen, Number of visits with sub-specialists, Revenue/Income.

The team should be focused on what they can control. It empowers them to do well and over time this will lead to improved outcomes of care.

Scott Conard, MD              Michael Tuggy, MD                  Susan Lindstrom                 Laurence Bauer, MSW, MEd

scott@scottconard.com   MTuggy@converginghealth.com   slindstrom@mypha.com   Laurence.bauer@gmail.com