One of the biggest challenges in the US healthcare industry’s shift toward value-based care has been the development of meaningful quality measurement.

It’s a situation similar to that which, in the 1990s, many other industries faced in their transition toward an integrated, global supply chain, proffered Press Ganey Associates chief medical officer Dr. Thomas H. Lee.

Then, industries worked to develop “balanced scorecards,” that provided stakeholders with apples-to-apples comparisons of competitive advantage and sales results.

“There was lots of turmoil and mergers and new kinds of strange bedfellows were being thrown together,” Lee said. “They needed tools to show what they were trying to accomplish as an organization.”

“That’s where we are in healthcare today,” he observed. “It’s easy to say ‘transformation.’ It’s harder to actually execute on it. This is about going from that lofty goal to tactics. If you’re going to change, how do you measure, and then what do you do that makes what you’re measuring improve?”

Accordingly, Press Ganey issued a new white paper this month that offers healthcare organizations suggestions for improving their quality measurement efforts, as well as suggestions for incentive programs that they could use to improve care.

Read Lee’s full interview with HealthLeaders‘ John Commins here.