Comparing Physicians on Efficiency

Over the past decade, public reporting on health care performance has become increasingly common. But whereas most reporting has concentrated on the quality of care in health maintenance organizations, hospitals, or large medical practices, health care purchasers are now focusing on identifying which individual physicians deliver good care most efficiently. The appropriate way to measure physicians' efficiency — and the proper uses for such measurements — is a matter of disagreement between those who pay for health care and those who provide it.Knowledge about physicians' efficiency could be helpful to patients who increasingly struggle to afford premiums, deductibles, and . . .