Thomson Healthcare Launches Application That Assesses Physician Performance

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 08 Nov 2007 - 2:00 PDT

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Thomson Healthcare (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) has introduced Physician Performance Assessment, an application that health plans, regional health collaboratives, and other organizations use to evaluate the quality and cost of medical care.

The Physician Performance Assessment application is the first of its kind to emphasize clinical quality in two distinct ways. First, it evaluates whether medical care follows established clinical guidelines while it accounts for the severity and duration of the medical condition being treated. It doesn't focus merely on the consumption of healthcare resources. Second, it generates reports that inform physicians and physician networks about gaps in their patient care, so they can take corrective steps and improve clinical quality.

"Organizations that pay for medical care - health plans, employers, and government agencies - need to assess whether they are getting value for their money," said Thomson Healthcare Vice President Jeff Hanson. "And physicians are concerned that rating systems are more focused on cutting costs than raising quality. Our methodology meets the needs of healthcare payers - in a way that is credible, fair and helpful to doctors."

Thomson Healthcare has years of experience measuring the quality and cost of healthcare for leading health plans, hospitals, government agencies, and leading employer consortiums such as The Leapfrog Group and Bridges to Excellence. "The knowledge and methodologies developed through our extensive experience are distilled into the Physician Performance Assessment application," Hanson said.

This new analytic solution effectively analyzes the cost and quality of medical care by:

- Accounting for the severity of a patient's disease and other complicating conditions as well as their health risk. In this way, Physician Performance Assessment levels the playing field for doctors with sicker patients - ensuring fair comparisons with their peers.

- Evaluating physician performance from a clinical point of view, while also assessing the use of healthcare resources. This approach looks at the severity and duration of the medical condition and how it can best be treated, keeping the focus on the quality of care and not just the cost.

- Using widely accepted and scientifically valid measures of physician performance developed by the National Quality Forum, The National Committee for Quality Assurance, and the AQA (formerly the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance). These metrics are the healthcare industry's most reliable standards for evaluating clinical care.

Physician Performance Assessment also helps doctors improve the quality of care, because it shows how they compare with their peers and generates reports that identify gaps in care and "action lists" indicating which patients need intervention. For example, doctors are informed whether their diabetic patients have received all the recommended care and, if not, which patients are missing tests or treatments. Physician networks are shown who among their doctors are high performers and who needs remediation.

About Thomson Healthcare

Thomson Healthcare is the leading provider of decision support solutions that help organizations across the healthcare industry improve clinical and business performance. Thomson Healthcare products and services help clinicians, hospitals, employers, health plans, government agencies, and pharmaceutical companies manage the cost and improve the quality of healthcare.

Thomson Healthcare is a part of The Thomson Corporation, a provider of value-added information, software tools and applications to professionals in the fields of healthcare, law, tax, accounting, scientific research, and financial services. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

http://www.thomsonhealthcare.com