Do report cards score with patients and doctors?

Key points. A study sponsored by U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research showed that physician report cards (physician profiles) for diabetes were unable to reliably detect true practice differences among doctors at three types of medical practices studied. The difficulty in using outcomes to evaluate physician performance in this study was due, in large part, to the relatively small number of diabetics managed by each doctor. A major problem with the current method of profiling individual doctors is the process can backfire if linked to powerful incentives not to have patients whose conditions are hard to manage and/or incur high costs.