December 23, 2013 | Two years after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts implemented its Alternative Quality Contract system, providing care centers with a standard budget plus financial incentives for improving quality-of-care metrics year over year, a team of Massachusetts-based health care experts are examining the program's effects on pediatric care. Because adult health care, taken as a whole, dwarfs the costs of even intensive pediatric care, the researchers were concerned that the quality of children's care would be neglected under the novel insurance system. However, their study, published today in Pediatrics, shows that pediatric quality-of-care measures included in the program all showed small but real improvement over the time the Alternative Quality Contract has been in effect. News Medical