Physician consortium stresses new performance measurements

The measures covering adult diabetes, prenatal testing and coronary artery disease aim to help doctors assess and improve the quality of care they provide.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. June 4, 2001.

Josie R. Williams, MD, an Austin, Texas, internist and gastroenterologist, believes that too few physicians measure their performance in the exam room, leaving open the possibility that patients may not be getting the best possible care.

In hopes that more doctors will evaluate their own work, Dr. Williams, chair of the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, along with other leaders in the group, is encouraging the use of three new performance measurement sets.

The consortium's measures cover adult diabetes, prenatal testing and chronic stable coronary artery disease, and will serve as tools to aid individual physician quality improvement.

"Until you start measuring your performance, you really don't know how well you're performing," said Dr. Williams, who is also medical director of the Texas Health Quality Alliance. "It is a way of helping us to give better care."

The consortium, convened by the AMA, is an organization that develops and implements physician-driven performance measures. Its goal is to improve patient health and safety by developing evidence-based clinical performance measures that enhance quality and foster accountability, promoting implementation of performance activities and advancing the science of performance measurement.

"We're putting a tool in the physician's hands to see how well they do in the long haul," said R. Heather Palmer, MD, professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health and chair of the consortium's adult diabetes work group. Dr. Palmer will mention the new measures when she speaks on performance measurement at the AMA Annual Meeting in Chicago later this month. [...]