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Where in the world are the ambulatory benchmarking data?
Healthcare Benchmarks
|August 5, 1998
Summary
Ambulatory care is a significant part of healthcare spending and hospital revenue. Accessing physician office data is challenging, with proprietary databases and new initiatives offering solutions beyond limited free sources.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Management
- Health Economics
Background:
- Ambulatory care represents over half of U.S. health expenditures.
- It is projected to constitute half of average hospital revenue.
- Growing payer and patient pressures necessitate a focus on ambulatory care efficiency.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the importance of analyzing ambulatory care.
- To identify challenges and sources for ambulatory care data, particularly for physician offices.
Main Methods:
- Review of current healthcare economic trends.
- Identification of data sources for ambulatory care, including proprietary databases and government sources.
- Mention of a new data collection project by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care.
Main Results:
- Ambulatory care is a major financial component of the healthcare system.
- Data on physician offices is scarce and difficult to obtain.
- Proprietary databases and new accreditation projects are emerging as key data sources.
Conclusions:
- Healthcare providers must critically evaluate their ambulatory care services.
- Reliable and current data is crucial for strategic decision-making in ambulatory care.
- Limited free data sources necessitate exploring specialized databases and new data collection efforts.