San Francisco, Calif. (April 1, 2008) – The Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) today announced its endorsement of the “Patient Charter for Physician Performance Measurement, Reporting and Tiering Programs”. PBGH has long worked to improve the quality and affordability of health care by giving patients information that will allow them to make more informed choices based on the quality and value provided. The Patient Charter is a key step in assuring both patients and providers that the information used for health care decision making is reliable and fair, and PBGH has encouraged leading physician groups and health plans to commit to its principles.
Other employer, consumer and labor groups also are endorsing the Patient Charter ---- the Leapfrog Group, the National Business Coalition on Health, AARP, AFL-CIO, and the National Partnership for Women & Families. Many leading physician groups and health insurers are also supporting these principles that guide measuring and reporting to patients about doctors’ performance.
“Measuring performance and using that information to inform quality improvement, patient choice and payment is integral to any comprehensive health care reform,” said David Lansky, President & CEO of PBGH. “The Patient Charter fosters doing measurement right, which is a needed foundation for change. PBGH will build our expectation that health plans abide by the Patient Charter into our requests for proposals with major health plans.”
By encouraging fair and accurate measurement, the hope is that the Patient Charter will foster a health care system that rewards meaningful improvement and higher value. This effort builds on the knowledge that there is huge variation in the quality and cost of health care services. There cannot be movement to higher quality and more cost effective care without valid performance information.
“The Patient Charter addresses the need for a consistent national solution to the challenge of measuring physician performance, while preserving local innovation to improve care,” said Peter V. Lee, Executive Director for National Policy at PBGH, and co-chair of the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project which organized the Patient Charter effort. “The Patient Charter provides a clear path forward in a controversial area so all parties can focus on what is most important: improving care.”
The Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project is a group of leading consumer, labor and employer organizations, including PBGH that works to ensure that all Americans have access to publicly reported health care performance information. The Project is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation along with support from participating organizations. For more information on the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project or the Patient Charter, go to www.healthcaredisclosure.org.
PBGH is a California-based association of 50 of the nation’s largest purchasers of health care focused on improving the quality and availability of affordable health care. PBGH represents public and private health care purchasers who cover more than three million retirees, employees and their families, and who are responsible for $10 billion in annual health care expenditures. Since 1989, PBGH has promoted public reporting of data at every level of the health care system to improve performance among health care providers and to help consumers make better choices.