States Lack Physician Quality Reports
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
A new report says most states are doing a poor job of providing consumers with easily accessible data regarding the quality of physicians
Using a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation directory of websites that evaluate health care quality, researchers graded states on the quality of accessible information they provided. According to iHealth Beat, websites were examined to see if the available information was up to date, available at no cost, and produced by independent third parties.
The report says, “While Medicare has a public web site that contains information on physicians, it is completely void of any data on the quality of care delivered. That’s all the more surprising since physicians have been reporting a basket of quality measures to Medicare for several years.”
States were scored based on the following criteria: percentage of doctors rated, whether ratings included patient outcomes, consumer experience, and ease of access through an internet search. Kaiser Health News reports any sites that failed to meet the criteria were eliminated and information provided by insurance companies was disregarded because of general patient distrust of insurance providers.
“I was shocked because I honestly thought the availability of information on the quality of physicians was far more prevalent … it’s a very mixed bag,” said Francois de Brantes, co-author of the report.
Researchers also found that while many states provided information on primary care physicians, they lacked ratings for specialists. “That’s only 10 or 15 percent of the cost of care,” de Brantes said. “They now might want to focus on the rest. When patients go and have procedures done by cardiologists or orthopedists or oncologists, they deserve to know the quality of care they are going to get.”
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