Investigators at RAND Report Findings in Health Insurance (Creating Unidimensional Global Measures of Physician Practice Quality Based on Health…

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Investigators at RAND Report Findings in Health Insurance (Creating Unidimensional Global Measures of Physician Practice Quality Based on Health Insurance Claims Data)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Researchers detail new data in Health Insurance. According to news originating from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "To explore the extent to which commonly used claims-based process quality indicators can be used to create an internally valid global composite measure of physician practice quality. Health insurance claims data (October 2007-May 2010) from 134 physician practices in Seattle, WA."

Financial support for this research came from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from RAND, "We use confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis to develop theory- and empirically driven internally valid composite measures based on 19 quality indicators. Data Collection Methods. Health insurance claims data from nine insurance companies and self-funded employers were collected and aggregated by third-party organization. Our results did not support a single global measure using the entire set of quality indicators. We did identify an acceptable multidimensional model (RMSEA = 0.059; CFI = 0.934; TLI = 0.910). The four dimensions in our data were diabetes, depression, preventive care, and generic drug prescribing. Our study demonstrates that commonly used process indicators can be used to create a small set of useful composite measures."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "However, the lack of an internally valid single unidimensional global measure has important implications for policy approaches meant to improve quality by rewarding 'high-quality physicians.."

For more information on this research see: Creating Unidimensional Global Measures of Physician Practice Quality Based on Health Insurance Claims Data. Health Services Research, 2017;52(3):1061-1078. Health Services Research can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - www.wiley.com/; Health Services Research - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-6773)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from G.R. Martsolf, RAND Corp, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States. Additional authors for this research include A.C. Carle and D.P. Scanlon.

Keywords for this news article include: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, North and Central America, Health Insurance, RAND.