Physician Profiling -- An Analysis of Inpatient Practice Patterns in Florida and Oregon

As health care costs continue to escalate, U.S. physicians are becoming increasingly aware of the need to set limits on the services they deliver. Two types of review could be used to set limits: assessing the appropriateness of specific decisions, and assessing the broad pattern of decisions made over time. Because the case-by-case approach not only burdens physicians with tiresome “nickel and dime” reviews but also does not easily accommodate legitimate exceptions to practice guidelines, 1 – 3 physicians have a strong interest in devising limit-setting mechanisms that are based on their average behavior over time. The concept of focusing on patterns . . .