To help or hinder: Which is more important in explaining a physician's willingness to recommend a health plan?

To examine how specific health plan practices contribute to physicians' willingness to recommend a health plan to a patient, and whether the relative importance of plan practices is viewed differently when patients are seriously ill.

The Physician's Evaluation of Health Plans Project has surveyed 1,757 generalist physicians in 16 health plans in 5 areas nationwide. Each physician reported on one plan. Three multi-item scales assessed physicians' perceptions of health plan activities that facilitated or impeded high-quality care in the plans and the clinical capabilities of plan physicians. Regression analyses were used to explore relations between facilitators, barriers, and clinical capabilities, and two global physician judgments (the physician's willingness to recommend a plan and their judgment that a plan provided lower quality for sicker patients).

A physician's willingness to recommend a health plan is more highly related to what plans do to facilitate care than to the barriers created by plans in managing care. However, barriers to care were substantially more important when evaluating health plan quality for sicker patients.

From the physician's perspective, the relative importance of plan strategies to manage care is different for typical patients and patients who are more seriously ill. Efforts to collect information on health plan quality should separately evaluate care for sicker patients, in addition to evaluating the overall performance of the health plan.