Digital Public Reporting Systems for Evaluating Health Care Quality: Systematic Review

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Information Science
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Public reporting (PR) disseminates healthcare provider quality and performance data to the public, primarily for provider selection.
• Despite evidence of PR improving healthcare quality, adoption rates remain low, often due to a mismatch between reported data and user needs.
• Understanding how data encoding and presentation influence user utilization is crucial for improving PR system effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review health care public reporting (PR) systems.
• To explore how data encoding and presentation formats impact user utilization of PR systems.
• To assess the influence of data inconsistencies and inaccuracies on the actual use of PR information.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a systematic literature review across five electronic databases (Web of Science, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed).
• Focused on studies presenting health care information from an individual user perspective.
• Assessed the quality of 25 included empirical studies using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool.

Main Results:

• Website and dashboard presentation formats were investigated in 40% and 20% of studies, respectively.
• Data quality and user heterogeneity were examined in 48% and 20% of studies.
• Standardized guidelines for websites and dashboards enhance data reliability and user comprehension, while user heterogeneity influences outcome indicators.

Conclusions:

• Proposes an integrated structure-process-outcome framework for health care PR.
• Recommends dashboard data presentation to mitigate inconsistencies and improve comprehension in PR systems.
• Identifies knowledge gaps and suggests future research directions for online PR.