Profiling performance in primary care in the United States

摘要

Physicians' performance is increasingly being profiled in the United States to release performance data to the public and make routinely collected data available to healthcare purchasers and regulators. The United Kingdom is likely to follow suit. To justify the burden and costs of profiling, close collaboration between physicians, healthcare organisations, and other stakeholders is needed. The performance measures used in profiling need to be standardised; duplication of effort needs to be minimised; and the objectives, measures, and methods used need to be transparent. Linking of hitherto disparate data elements such as diagnoses, pharmacy data, and laboratory results will increase the sophistication and coverage of physician profiling.