Measure of success: Practices compare to best
MGMA to offer new benchmarks
What is the peak performance for a group practice and how can you get there? The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) of Englewood, CO, is trying to help practices find the answer with new benchmarking comparisons.
MGMA’s annual cost survey reports now feature better performers in the areas of efficiency and financial stability. In 1998, MGMA members will be able to receive direct comparisons to the better performers.
The cost survey includes such areas as staffing ratios, productivity measures, practice revenue, expenses, and physician compensation. In the 1997 report, 16 practices met the "better performer" criteria of low cost and high physician compensation out of 353 multispecialty groups submitting data. (About 1,357 practices, most of them single specialty, participated in the cost survey.)
"By comparing your performance to organizations that were selected against the criteria, you can model and try to achieve the same results of lower cost and better financial stability," says David Gans, CMPE, MGMA’s survey operations director.
In 1998, MGMA also will explore adding some clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction measures to the survey, says Gans.
The direct comparisons to better performers are available only to "sterling" and "premier" members of MGMA. The association also will further the benchmarking and networking efforts of its "premier" members by offering a closed Web site, educational forums, and additional survey data.
In a separate effort, MGMA is completing its provider profiling project with a symposium in February focusing on the data collection and possible uses of physician-specific information.
As a next step, MGMA hopes to establish a service through which practices could collect data and submit them for analysis and comparisons to norms, says Neill Piland, DrPH, research director of MGMA’s Center for Research on Ambulatory Health Care Administration.
"[Profiling] is a good educational tool, providing feedback to physicians and the practices themselves who are trying to reduce variation in how physicians treat patients," Piland says.
[Editor’s note: For a copy of the MGMA cost survey report ($200 members, $300 non-members, plus shipping and handling), contact MGMA, 104 Inverness Terrace East, Englewood, CO 80112-5306. Telephone: (888) 608-5602.
For more information on the profiling symposium, Feb. 19-20, 1998, in Denver, contact the Center for Research in Ambulatory Health Care Administration, (303) 397-7879. World Wide Web: http://www.mgma.com.]
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