An empiric approach to identifying physician peer groups from claims data: An example from breast cancer care.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To develop an empiric approach for evaluating the performance of physician peer groups based on patient-sharing in administrative claims data.

Data sources

Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare linked dataset.

Study design

Applying social network theory, we constructed physician peer groups for patients with breast cancer. Under different assumptions of key parameter values-minimum patient volume for physician inclusion and minimum number of patients shared between physicians for a connection-we compared agreement in group membership between split samples during 2004-2006 (T1) (reliability) and agreement in group membership between T1 and 2007-2009 (T2) (stability). We also compared the results with those derived from randomly generated groups

SUBMITTER: Herrin J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6338298 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature