This week, Kaiser Permanente became the first Oregon health care provider to publish quality information about its outpatient medical offices, the Portland Business Journal reports.
The online report compares clinics on nine quality measures, including child immunization rates, diabetic blood sugar control, and breast and cervical cancer screenings for women.
Maureen Wright, assistant medical director for Quality Management and Systems at Kaiser, said the health system will add more measures each year.
The report does not identify ratings for individual medical providers.
Kaiser's transparency effort comes about one year ahead of a regional effort to publish quality data about medical offices in the state, the Business Journal reports. The not-for-profit Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation is collecting data from health plans and other groups and plans to post quality data for individual clinics online in 2009 (Portland Business Journal, 3/20).