Quality measurement and control in physician decision making: state of the art

The status of the concept of controlling the quality of physicians is reviewed as are studies that have been done on methods to measure and improve quality. The conclusions are dismal given the rhetoric and actions on attempts to measure and control quality of physician decision making. Massive attempts are being made, for example, mandating PSROs to monitor quality before there is a methodology. Cost and quality reviews have, at most, a marginal impact and do not deserve the expenditures to conduct them. Studies on utilization review show minimal impact on reducing utilization. Administrative reviews reduce utilization for certain specific, narrowly defined procedures such as injections. There is no operational definition of "unnecessary" utilization. The tendency is to regard the lowest levels as optimal, presumably because they result in lower expenditures. Bureaucratic reviews do not provide incentives to decision makers the way various types of HMO delivery types do from current evidence. Hence, HMOs, deductibles and coinsurance, and competition have greater promise for limiting expenditures than do utilization reviews. Quality audits are also marginally effective because of limited promise of changing provider behavior given current methods of doing so. They miss the organizational aspects in which incentives are generated. Research is needed, therefore, on alternative forms of quality and cost control such as HMOs, physician risk sharing, competitive models, and deductibles and coinsurance. Until the much needed research has been done, the amount of resources spent on review should be minimized. In the meantime, the review processes should concentrate on extreme variations of very narrowly defined criteria of proven validity while improving the review methodology by systematic research on quality monitoring.