The relationship between health plan performance measures and physician network overlap: implications for measuring plan quality.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To examine the extent to which health plan quality measures capture physician practice patterns rather than plan characteristics.

Data source

We gathered and merged secondary data from the following four sources: a private firm that collected information on individual physicians and their health plan affiliations, The National Committee for Quality Assurance, InterStudy, and the Dartmouth Atlas.

Study design

We constructed two measures of physician network overlap for all health plans in our sample and linked them to selected measures of plan performance. Two linear regression models were estimated to assess the relationship between the measures of physician network overlap and the plan performance measures.

Principal findings

The results indicate tha

SUBMITTER: Maeng DD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2910566 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature