Putting smart money to work for quality improvement.

Objective: To investigate the effects of paying physicians for performance on quality measures of diabetes care when combined with other care management tools.

Data Sources/study Setting: In 2001, a managed care organization in upstate New York designed and implemented a pilot program to financially reward doctors for the quality of care delivered to diabetic patients. In addition to paying a performance bonus, physicians were also supplied with a diabetic registry and met in groups to discuss progress in meeting goals for diabetic care.

An economic analysis of health plan conversions: are they in the public interest?

Over the last decade, managed-care companies have been consolidating on both a regional and national scale. More recently, nonprofit health plans have been converting to for-profit status, and this conversion has frequently occurred as a step to facilitate merger or acquisition with a for-profit company. Some industry observers attribute these managed-care marketplace trends to an industry shakeout resulting from increased competition in the sector.

National Committee on Quality Assurance health-plan accreditation: predictors, correlates of performance, and market impact.

Context: Accreditation of health care organizations has traditionally been considered a building block of quality assurance. However, the differences between accredited and nonaccredited health plans and the impact of accreditation on plan enrollment are not well understood.

Objectives: To determine the characteristics of plans that have submitted to accreditation review, the performance of accredited plans on quality indicators and the impact of accreditation on enrollment.

Quality information and consumer health plan choices.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effects of providing information about plan quality on consumers' health plan choices in a private employment setting. Analysis of plan switching behavior suggests that the provision of quality information had a small, but significant effect on consumer plan choices. Employees were more likely to switch from plans with lower reported quality.

Assessing the Risk of Microbial Pathogens: Application of a Judgment-Encoding Methodology.

This paper reports the results of a risk assessment of the adverse health effects from ingesting foods contaminated with certain microbial pathogens. The risk assessment was performed as part of a larger project to develop a risk-based sampling methodology for imported foods inspected by the U.S.