How well do pediatricians and other health care providers do their jobs?
One way to measure is through composite scores that weigh factors such as treatment safety and effectiveness and the level of patient-centered care. But physicians have been guarded about performance measurement — in part because the methodology for comparative measurements of care quality is underdeveloped and could result in inaccurate scores. To address this issue, Jochen Profit — an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine who frequently collaborates with the Baker Institute’s Health Economics Program — has, with his colleagues, developed a transparent and scientifically sound framework for accurately measuring care quality.
The new methodology is significant because composite scores do more than measure a health provider’s performance — they also have a broad impact on the underlying system of care because improvements on multiple aspects of quality will be necessary to significantly affect the score.
“They incentivize providers to try to kill two birds with one stone,” Profit says.
To learn more about Profit’s study, read “Are composite measures of quality useful for profiling pediatric health care providers?” in the June 2010 newsletter for the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy-Baylor College of Medicine Joint Program in Health Policy Research.