Report cards or instrument panels: who needs what?
BACKGROUND
The report card movement in health care is a positive response to legitimate customer needs and requirements for comparative information on quality and costs. At the same time, providers have a legitimate concern about potential problems with gathering and using valid data in a prudent manner. Report cards have problems that often detract from their potentially constructive uses. In response to this concern, the authors propose that instrument panels--a newer concept in health care--compared to the static, judgmental image of report cards project an action-oriented, decision-making image.


RESULTS
Descriptions are given of three types of instrument panels based on work in progress in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock health care system, a regional, integrated delivery system that serves the population of New Hampshire and parts of Vermont and Massachusetts: a 450-physician group practice (The Hitchcock Clinic), which provides more than one million visits per year in more than 25 locations; a tertiary health care facility (Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital) with more than 300,000 patient days; and prepaid health plan (Matthew Thornton Health Plan) with approximately 120,000 members.


CONCLUSIONS
It would be wise and efficient for providers to design instrument panel data collection systems that can feed directly into report cards, leading to the triple benefit of enhancing accuracy, reducing total costs, and increasing overall utility to both providers and their customers.
Nelson
E C
EC
Hitchcock Clinic, Lebanon, NH 03756-0001, USA.
Batalden
P B
PB
Plume
S K
SK
Mihevc
N T
NT
Swartz
W G
WG
D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services / Q000592:standards*; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000592:standards*; D009511:New England; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D014600:Utilization Review