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The Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) has filed a lawsuit to stop the state from ranking doctors on quality and costs. From the BNA Health Care Policy Report ($$) we read:
In the complaint, MMS accused the state of defamation, interference with advantageous relations, breach of contract, breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing, violation of the state’s consumer protection law, and violation of due process.
And if that’s not enough, well . . . we can even make more stuff up.
June 4, 2008 at 3:45 am
Dr. Fortin (no relation),
The MMS lawsuit is not against transparency. We are in favor of GOOD transparency. We also are deply involved in many statewide efforts to improve quality and control health care costs.
However, the system we have sued to correct is incredibly bad, and may actually make matters worse. It defames physicians and misleads patients. We tried to work with the state for years to correct its system, but after our repeated efforts fell on deaf ears, we had to go to court.
I don’t want to get too detailed about this, but here’s our key point: The methodology of this program is so bad, a great many doctors are assigned patients they didn’t treat, and assigned procedures they didn’t perform. Simple as that. Not a small fraction of doctors – a significant portion.
We’re not making perfection the enemy of the good. But the system we have sued to stop is not anywhere near good.
As an advocate of transparency, I think you would agree that a bad system is just noise. It does not advance the goals of using transparency to improve quality and control health costs.
The complaint is posted on our website at http://www.massmed.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=21896&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm
Frank Fortin
Communications Director
Massachusetts Medical Society
June 4, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] Frank Fortin (no relation) — Communications Director, MMS — responds to my flippant jibe at their recent lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts on their physician ranking program. He [...]