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A RECENT SURVEY on health care quality should serve as a reminder that employers can ill afford to make cost the sole criterion when determining what coverage to offer employees. [...]

California doctors should save under new reporting system Physicians in California are about to reap the benefits of a new law making the data-collecting process for health plans' quality report [...]

Quality is going to be job one for providers next year-whether they like it or not. Thanks to the recently released report on medical errors by the Institute of Medicine, [...]

The National Committee for Quality Assurance released the results of a survey made on the service quality of managed care plans in its first annual 'State of Managed Care Quality' report. The data gathered from the survey revealed that there are variations in the quality of managed care plans and that there is no direct relation between the quality of health care and medical costs. Experts are optimistic that managed care organizations' quality of health care services will improve.

Health plans have been under pressure to improve service. Now, the heat is on providers. Employers and health plans are starting to demand that hospitals and physicians measure patient satisfaction. [...]

Managed health plans, primarily undertaken to decrease employer health costs, must be evaluated constantly for quality. Techniques used by Allied-Signal Aerospace Co of Torrance, CA, include establishing performance standards with its plan administrator and setting up its own internal quality measurement standards. Rosemead, CA-based Southern California Edison Co. has expanded its utilization review system to track complaints of adverse incidents, thereby allowing the company to evaluate providers more thoroughly, and remove them from the network if necessary.

Two more new medical quality initiatives have sprung forth, both claiming to make that most elusive of concepts more useful to patients and payers. VHA, an alliance of 1,650 not-for-profit [...]

After being threatened with exclusion, Medicare peer review organizations have retained a role in monitoring the performance of private-sector Medicare health plans. The provision is contained in the recently approved [...]

Healthcare quality panel will accomplish little, except maybe as rubber stamp Last September, in the heat of the presidential campaign, President Clinton took the pulse of the nation and found [...]