A practice profiling system for residents

Providers are increasingly evaluated and measured as part of quality, credentialling, and reimbursement programs approach often used by managed care organisations, However, these evaluations are rarely used in residence training, meaning that physicians, entering practice have little experience or understanding of these measures. To address this issue, in 1998 the authors successfully developed a three-part practice-profiling system for internal medicine residents at their institution that includes measures of patient satisfaction, disease-management profiles for diabetes and hypertension, and an Internet-based faculty-evaluation program. The patient-satisfaction profile utilizes a ten-question patient survey that emphasizes physician-patient communication issues. The diabetes and hypertension disease-management profiles use the resident's own patients to profile to process and outcome measures for common chronic ambulatory conditions. The faculty-evaluation profile it, conducted over the Internet, and allows the resident to compare faculty evaluations with those of his or her peer group. Residents receive the profiles as a packet in a scheduled session with a faculty supervisor twice each year. A total of 120 residents are profiled annually for the above measures. Residents rated the program very highly and found the profiling program to be instructive and effective feedback. As payers and regulator. increasingly use physician profiling, resident, will benefit from learning the strengths and of profiling systems earls in their training.