Measuring provider quality and performance

While making nice visualizations or predictions represent the sexier aspects of healthcare analytics, there are other types of analytics that are also important. Sometimes, it boils down to good, old number crunching. Monitoring the performance of physicians and healthcare organizations using healthcare measures is a good example of this type of analytical technique. Healthcare measures provide a mechanism by which individuals can measure and compare the compliance of participating providers on evidence-based medical recommendations. For example, it is a widely accepted recommendation that patients with diabetes receive foot exams to detect diabetic foot ulcers every three months by a physician.

A state-sponsored healthcare measure might specify guidelines for calculating the number of diabetic patients receiving care at an institution, and then determine the percentage of those patients that received appropriate foot care. Similar measures would exist for the common heart, lung, and joint diseases, among many others. This provides a way to identify the providers that provide the highest quality care, and these recommendations can be downloaded for public consumption. We will discuss specific healthcare measures in Chapter 6, Measuring Healthcare Quality.