Involving Consumers in Physician Choice: Making Data into Useable Information for Chronically Ill Patients in Consumer-Directed Health Plans

What tools will consumers need to help select high performing physicians, within CDHPs? Physician performance data is one of the tools that can be used to help consumers make these decisions. However, there are important opportunities and challenges facing consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) trying to engage consumers in using physician performance data (PPD). The specific aims of the project were: 1) to develop methods for informing consumers about physician clinical performance; 2) to test the effectiveness of these methods in helping consumers with chronic conditions in CDHPs to make an informed choice of primary care physician (PCP); 3) to explore how consumer characteristics affect their ability to understand PPD and their response to that data. The objective of this study was to understand how and whether PPD can be appropriately and effectively used in CDHPs.