Detroit, MI – In 2008, the Greater Detroit Area Health Council (GDAHC) launched its online physician organization performance report at www.myCareCompare.org.  The public report provides the “pulse on healthcare quality in southeastern Michigan.” 

Today, GDAHC has posted “Round Three” performance data on the website.  In a preliminary review of performance comparing data for the three reporting periods from 2006 to 2008, the report shows improvements in three key areas — diabetes, cancer screening, and antibiotic use for children with upper respiratory infection.

The specific improvements are as follows:

• All 5 diabetes measures improved over time, particularly blood sugar control, which  improved by almost 7 percentage points

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  • Testing blood sugar:  1.0 percentage point improvement
  • Controlling blood sugar: 6.9 percentage points improvement
  • Testing cholesterol: 2.0 percentage points improvement
  • Controlling cholesterol: 2.9 percentage points improvement
  • Cholesterol medication use: 4.7 percentage points improvement
• All 3 cancer screening measures improved over time, especially breast cancer screening, which improved by 7.6 percentage points.  This improvement is even more impressive because Michigan’s performance is high relative to US screening rates: in 2009, the National Committee for Quality Assurance reported a national breast cancer screening rate of 70.2 percent, compared to Michigan’s rate of 80.2 percent for commercial members.
  • Breast cancer screening:  7.6 percentage points improvement
  • Cervical cancer screening: 3.6 percentage points improvement
  • Colorectal cancer screening: 7.5 percentage points improvement
• Antibiotic use for children with upper respiratory infection improved by 4.1 percentage points

“Public reports are a useful approach for moving the needle and improving healthcare quality,” said Steve Grant, Executive Vice President of Physician Partnerships at the Detroit Medical Center and Chair of GDAHC’s Measurement and Reporting Team.   “We are satisfied with the improvements in these areas and the fact that they demonstrate that, as a community working together to improve quality, we are moving in the right direction.”

myCareCompare.org was created as a community resource to provide comparative data on the quality of care being provided, useful information for consumers such as questions to ask during a doctor visit, and to improve the quality of care that is provided to patients.  There are two reports on the website, a hospital report and a physician organization report. 

The Physician Organization Performance Report shows how well physicians in each organization provide care for their patients according to various topics.  Doctors also use the report to see how they compare to other doctors, to learn from each other and to improve the care they give.

Data used in the performance reports were prepared using well-established specifications and reporting protocols. The Center for Population Health (CPH) was contracted to combine the data from local health plans, each of which voluntarily provided data for the performance reports, to get one rate for each Physician Organization. CPH, in turn, provided the data to GDAHC for public reporting. The data in the report represents approximately four million people living in Southeast Michigan.