Biopsy rates vary with patient profile across different physicians in an academic dermatology practice.
Current healthcare trends promote data-driven "benchmarking" to decrease cost and increase quality. Dermatologists perform 79% of skin biopsies and biopsy rate is an easily measured benchmark. To reduce the risk of a misguided "one size fits all" benchmark for biopsies, it will help to document the factors driving divergent biopsy rates.This letter compares biopsy rates and high-risk patient ratios for 1000 sequential patients from two academic dermatologists. Elevated biopsy rates (0.55 vs 0.42, p &lt; 0.001) were associated with elevated ratios of high-risk patients (.52 versus .30, p&lt; 0.001). Although limited by small sample size, this research takes a first step toward future efforts to improve accuracy of biopsy benchmarking.
University of Kansas School of Medicine.
Cicy
C
Li
Ryan
R
Fischer
Jo
J
Wick
Anand
A
Rajpara
Deede
D
Liu
Daniel
D
Aires
D019985:Benchmarking; D001706:Biopsy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003880:Dermatology / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D014481:United States