The American Medical Association has released new guidelines designed to help insurers standardize the format they use to report data to physicians, Health Data Management reports (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/20).
Reason for Developing the Guidelines
AMA President Jeremy Lazarus said, "Almost every public and private health insurer presents physicians with practice profile reports to support data-driven decision-making."
However, he added that such feedback has been "ineffective since the complex reports vary from plan to plan and are difficult to read and interpret" (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 7/16).
About the New Guidelines
AMA developed the guidelines after seeking input from insurers, medical associations, accreditation organizations and others.
The guidelines aim to provide a roadmap for:
- Encouraging greater standardization of data reporting;
- Increasing the transparency of the process used to create reports; and
- Providing sufficient detail when reporting data to physicians (Health Data Management, 7/20).
Lazarus said, "Encouraging industry-wide standardization of practice data reports will help physicians double check the information and use accurate data as a tool to identify opportunities for practice improvement" (Healthcare IT News, 7/16).
A list of the more than 60 organizations supporting the guidelines is available from AMA (Health Data Management, 7/20).