Physician Views of Quality Improvement Measurement and Consumer Directed Health Benefits

Leapfrog Group
09/01/05 - 09/29/06

Dennis Scanlon, Department of Health Policy and Administration
Eric Ford, Texas Tech University
Jon Christianson, University of Minnesota

In collaboration with Blue Shield of California (BSC), researchers designed a phone-based interview to measure, analyze and report on physicians' responses to a comparative patient safety, quality and cost/value information sharing campaign. Researchers provide facility (hospital and ambulatory surgery center (ASC)) cost and quality data to physicians and assess their interpretation of and confidence in the validity of the data, and assess the potential impact of such information on physician behavior.

The goal of this information sharing project is to gain insight into how cost and quality information, and incentives and rewards, could be most effective in influencing physician referral behavior. The main objectives are to:

  1. Present physicians with comparative information on hospital quality metrics;
  2. Present physicians with comparative information on hospital and ASC cost metrics;
  3. Present physicians with comparative information on overall facility value relative to other facilities in the marketplace;
  4. Learn how physicians might alter their referral patterns given such information.