Quality assurance in eight adult medicine group practices

Four evaluations of ambulatory medical care tasks were developed for use in quality assurance. The evaluations used medical records data and explicit criteria incorporating branching logic. They were implemented in eight general medicine provider groups in two teaching hospitals and six related health centers. Agreement with criteria among 316 provider responses to questionnaires varied from 57% to 100%. The percentage of cases with one or more variation from evaluation criteria, confirmed on peer review to have a deficiency in care, ranged by task from 6% to 42%, with substantial variation between sites. Physician reviewers from each site varied in leniency. Numbers of actions taken to correct deficiencies ranged by site and task from zero to six. Multisite evaluations revealed differences in performance and efforts to improve that are not apparent when each site conducts its own evaluations. More uniformly effective and impartial quality assurance is needed to correct some important deficiencies in care observed in this study.