An Alternative to Medical Ratings Sites?

Medical Rating Sites: it’s a topic that’s as hot as the weather these days. Several recent blog posts (See First, Better Health) and news stories have explored the heated debate over the fairness, accuracy and transparency of these sites. What troubles me is how this issue divides rather than unites patients and physicians, often resulting in litigation vs. collaboration.

But there is an alternative: the Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) is an independent coalition of physicians, hospitals, health plans, consumers and government agencies. Through its biennial survey of patients, MHQP provides a way for health care stakeholders to work together to gather reliable information on health care quality.

MHQP has just released the results of its third survey on patient experience and the first published since Massachusetts implemented universal health care coverage. In the latest report, 80,000 commercially insured patients rated their primary care experiences along several dimensions. The report highlights both progress and areas that need improvement:

Patient Knowledge: An increase in the number of patients who reported that physicians had knowledge of their personal and medical history but improvement still needed.

Reporting Test Results: No change in the percentage of adult and pediatric patients who reported receiving follow up test results from their physicians (about 70%).

Coordination of Care between Primary Care and Specialists: Needs improvement. Forty percent of adult patients and 35 percent of parents of pediatric patients still reported that their primary care physicians did not seem informed about the care they received from specialists to whom they had been referred.

What I really love about the MHQP report is that, unlike many medical ratings sites, it provides objective information that patients, physicians and health care professionals can use to improve patient experience and health care quality. The MHQP press release profiles two physician practices that did just that.

Overall, I give the MHQP an A+ in its efforts to align the interests of health care providers and patients. By encouraging collaboration over litigation they are helping to create real improvements in health care quality. How do you think we can improve collaboration among health care stakeholders?