The politics of measuring outcomes

February 7, 2012 by MassDevice

By Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC

It's February, and with February comes Valentine's Day, and with Valentine's Day, comes Heart Month, and with Heart Month, comes the department of Health and Human Services press release promising a million lives saved if we just eat right, stop smoking, and have our free blood pressure and cholesterol checks. We are told this bold new initiative will be working to save a million lives. After all, "$1 of every $6 in health care" is spent on heart disease.

But how, exactly, are we going to measure our outcomes with any of these initiatives? Will our feel-good press releases make it so? Do we really have a good system of determining the cause of death now versus several years from now to measure the impact of these programs? Are we really measuring how much it costs to screen all these people versus how much money we save?

Of course not. That would be a scientific approach.

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