A possible silver lining to the HEDIS changes

Well in any situation you do need to find the silver lining in this case.  I'm going to look at this from the patients point of view.  If there were plans not exactly being honest in their reporting then the fact is people weren't getting better.  The point of these measures was to report if people were closing clinical gaps in their conditions. if they were closing these gaps they would be getting healthier or at least not any worse.  The point of all this is to provide better health care and make people better. Maybe this gets a little lost sometimes with all the different issues that seem to crop up in health care.  What I see changing are organizations turning back to old fashioned health coaching and talking to their members about getting treatments and following up with them. The 20 minute conveyor belt just isn't going to work(not the doctor's fault). The plans and the practices are going to need to work together in outreaching to members after they have left the doctor's office. PCMH is an interesting approach but I think it lacks some teeth in reporting outcomes and outreach post office visit. It's still a good start to seeing changes down the road.  The other winner in this change is really the tax payer surprisingly enough. If plans weren't really supposed to get their bonus payments then HHS isn't going to be paying them extra money. I do recognize the fact however that this may impact plans that were doing nothing wrong.  It's going to be interesting how this all shakes out.