Rachel Werner, Wall Street Journal, Hospital Infections
In the Wall Street Journal, LDI Senior Fellow Rachel Werner, MD, PhD comments on a new study that found that Medicare's policy of not paying for the treatment of hospital-acquired infections had little impact on the rate of those infections. Previous research has shown mixed results for efforts to improve the quality of care by adjusting payments to hospitals, doctors and other providers. "The jury is still out on whether or not it works, and under what circumstances it works," said Werner, whose own recent study questions whether pay-for-performance tactics are effective. Werner is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and an investigator at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
