Report Cards, Hospitals and Physicians

The term report cards in the context of healthcare has come to be used to describe comparative data on quality and cost of care, particularly when such data are made available to the public. A common view is that greater transparency will drive improvement and guide patients to the best care. Although not the only stakeholder group that is subject to scrutiny, this entry focuses on report cards on providers, specifically hospitals and physicians.

Few would argue with the importance of provider efforts to measure performance internally for the purposes of improvement. For example, a practice may perform a peer review of physicians based on adherence to recognized care standards and make such information available to all providers within a practice. The controversy grows, however, with ...