General practitioners' perceptions of public reporting of institution and individual medicine prescribing data.

Xin Du,Xinping Zhang,Yuqing Tang

doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1893-5

Abstract

BackgroundPublic reporting of institution- and individual-level performance data has recently become a popular topic in the health care field. This study (1) evaluated the perceptions of general practitioners on the public reporting of institutional and individual medicine prescribing data in primary care institutions, and (2) compared the difference among the perceptions of general practitioners on the dimensions of necessity, methodological rigor, and impact of public reporting medicine prescribing data.MethodsWe conducted a survey in 10 primary care institutions in Q city, Hubei province. General practitioners who hold prescribing license were eligible for this study; we surveyed all eligible general practitioners in July 2014. The survey instrument was developed based on previous studies and expert opinions. Paired t-test or nonparametric test was used to evaluate the difference in perceptions between the institutional and individual medicine prescribing data reporting. An analysis of variance test was used to analyze the score differences among the three dimensions (i.e., necessity, methodological rigor, and impact).ResultsA total of 154 general practitioners were surveyed in this study. No significant difference in the perceptions of general practitioners was observed between the institution- and individual-level medicine prescribing data reporting (p > 0.05). General practitioners have significantly different perceptions on the three dimensions of the institution- and individual-level data reporting (p < 0.05). Methodological rigor obtained the lowest score. Regarding the strategies to facilitate the medicine prescribing data reporting, over 80 % of general practitioners selected the items that disclose process measures and not outcome measures, as well as educate patients on data interpretation.ConclusionThe perceptions of general practitioners between institution- and individual-level data reporting have no significant difference. General practitioners place their utmost concern on public reporting on the methodological rigor. Processing measures and patient education to improve the efficiency of public reporting require substantial attention.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1893-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Public reporting of institution- and individual-level performance data has recently become a popular topic in the health care field
The majority of patients of the 10 primary care institutions were covered by New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS); about 20 % patients were covered by other medical insurances; and the rest 20 % patients paid at their own expense
This study determined that the difference of perceptions of General practitioners (GP) between public reporting of the institution- and individual-level data lacked statistical significance

Summary

Introduction

Public reporting of institution- and individual-level performance data has recently become a popular topic in the health care field. Public reporting has been used as a vehicle to improve the performance at the institutional and individual levels [1]. The public reporting of health care performance data offers several potential benefits. Public reporting enables patients to identify the best physicians and hospitals, as well as to make informed choices [5]. Public reporting will increase competition within the health care system and offer physicians and hospitals incentives to improve quality [2, 6]. Public reporting provides policymakers and third-party payers with knowledge for informed decisions on payment, including rewarding high or penalizing low performers [7, 8]. The inadequate risk adjustment, lack of valid quality metrics and validated data are cited by critics [6]

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