Last week, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt called for a "Travelocity for health care," a system that would give physicians a quality grade and detail how much they charge for services, the Memphis Business Journal reports.
Leavitt said that consumers could use the system to compare physicians' abilities and prices online as they do when making other purchases. Such a Web site is still years away, but it could mean big technology investments for small physician offices and underscore the need to establish national standards for medical care.
The idea is that Medicare could use electronic health record data to grade physicians rather than insurance information to produce more accurate grades, the Business Journal reports.
"The current situation where doctors are being rated by insurance companies with claims data ... is not a fair way to go," Valerie Arnold, past president of the Memphis Medical Society, said, adding that an EHR "is clearly a more fair way to get at that data than to use claims-based information."
However, Arnold noted that EHRs might be too expensive for small group practices or an individual doctor. She added that a doctor's charges do not always reflect the quality of medical services.
Leavitt also touted a plan to create a national "learning network" of physician offices. About 1,200 physician offices would receive higher Medicare reimbursements in exchange for sharing information with HHS to boost the national quality reporting and grading system, he said (Sells, Memphis Business Journal, 2/11).