A Fair Approach to Comparing Quality of Care

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Abstract
Prologue: In 1988, twelve health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and a group of southern California researchers formed the HMO Quality of Care Consortium to examine quality of care in various health plans. This group aims to “develop systematic information on quality that is collected similarly across plans,” said Albert Siu, one of the researchers involved. Currently, while individual plans may possess extensive information on various aspects of quality, it is difficult to compare information from one plan to that of another. Nearly three years into the project, eleven of the HMOs are still active consortium members. The consortium, chaired by Gail Warden of the Henry Ford Health Care Corporation, has received major funding support from The John A. Hartford Foundation. In this article, the authors discuss “policy implications of technical problems in the measurement and public release of data on quality of care…beyond the release of hospital mortality data.” Siu, an internist who received his medical de...