Department of Health and Human Services

OFFICE OF

INSPECTOR GENERAL

MAY 2001

OEI-01-99-00690

Managed Care Organization 

Nonreporting to the 

National Practitioner Data Bank

A Signal for Broader Concern
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL

The mission of the Office of Inspector General (OIG), as mandated by Public Law 95-452, is to

protect the integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services programs as well as the health

and welfare of beneficiaries served by them. This statutory mission is carried out through a nationwide

program of audits, investigations, inspections, sanctions, and fraud alerts. The Inspector General

informs the Secretary of program and management problems and recommends legislative, regulatory,

and operational approaches to correct them.

Office of Evaluation and Inspections

The Office of Evaluation and Inspections (OEI) is one of several components of the Office of Inspector

General. It conducts short-term management and program evaluations (called inspections) that focus

on issues of concern to the Department, the Congress, and the public. The inspection reports provide

findings and recommendations on the efficiency, vulnerability, and effectiveness of departmental

programs. 

OEI's Boston Office prepared this report under the direction of Mark R. Yessian, Ph.D., Regional

Inspector General, and Joyce M. Greenleaf, M.B.A., Assistant Regional Inspector General. Principal

OEI staff included:

REGION HEADQUARTERS

Russell W. Hereford, Ph.D., Project Leader Alan Levine, Program Specialist

Norman J. Han, M.P.A., Program Analyst

To obtain copies of this report, please call the Boston Regional Office at 617-565-1050.

Reports are also available on the World Wide Web at our home page address:

http://oig.hhs.gov/oei
Managed Care and the Data Bank i OEI-01-99-00690

EXECUTIVE SUMM ARY

PURPOSE

In this study we examine the extent to which managed care organizations are reporting adverse

actions they take against health care practitioners to the National Practitioner Data Bank and

the factors that influence their level of reporting. 

DATA BANK AND MANAGED CARE ORGANIZATIONS

The basic aim of the Data Bank is to help protect patients from poorly performing health care

practitioners, mainly physicians and dentists. It contains information on practitioners who have

had medical malpractice payments made on their behalf and/or adverse actions taken against

them by a licensure board, professional society, or health care entity, such as a hospital or

managed care organization. Health care organizations and licensure boards use this information

to help them in their reviews of practitioners. 

EXTENT OF REPORTING

Managed care organizations rarely submit adverse action reports to the Data

Bank.

C From September 1, 1990 to September 30, 1999, they reported only 715 adverse

actions.

C Eighty-four percent of the managed care organizations (1,176 out of 1,401) never

reported an adverse action.

EXPLANATIONS

With close to 100 million individuals enrolled in these organizations and hundreds of thousands of

physicians and dentists associated with them, fewer than 1,000 adverse action reports over nearly

a decade serves for all practical purposes as “nonreporting.” Among the possible explanations

we identified are: the level of reporting may be appropriate; managed care organizations may not

be submitting reportable actions (perhaps because of some misunderstanding about their

reporting responsibility); they may be responding to poorly performing practitioners in ways that

do not require reporting to the Data Bank; and they may lack sufficient access to information to

determine if an adverse action is warranted.

While each of the above factors deserves attention as part of a fuller examination of factors

influencing reporting to the Data Bank, two explanations stood out as especially convincing as we

reviewed the information obtained from our interviews and the literature. 
Managed Care and the Data Bank ii OEI-01-99-00690

The two most likely explanations for the low level of reporting:

Limited focus on clinical oversight

Some managed care organizations devote considerable attention to the quality of care being

provided to their enrollees. But we learned that in a health care marketplace that has been

changing rapidly, many managed care organizations devote little attention to clinical oversight. 

The following factors help explain this limited focus:

C Heavy reliance on contracted panels of physicians rather than salaried physicians;

C Marketplace emphasis on price; and

C Consumer emphasis on access to physicians.

Reliance on downstream entities--hospitals, physician practice groups, and

State licensure boards--to conduct quality monitoring of practitioners

Managed care officials emphasized to us that they rely upon these entities to protect patients from

poor performers. They explained that these entities are more directly concerned with the delivery

of care and therefore in a better position to take actions that would call for reporting. They

added that as an ongoing check on the competency of practitioners, they rely heavily on the staff

privileging functions of hospitals.

A BROADER CONCERN

Limitations of downstream entities that managed care organizations rely upon

Managed care organizations’ considerable reliance on these entities accentuates the importance

of their efforts to identify and take appropriate action against those few practitioners who pose

harm to patients. In this study, we did not examine the performance of the downstream entities. 

But our prior studies and the health care literature offer considerable basis for questioning the

patient protections they afford.

Hospitals find it difficult to hold individual practitioners responsible for poor care.

State licensure boards struggle with quality-of-care cases.

Physician practice groups are similarly constrained.

ISSUES WARRANTING ATTENTION

Recently, the Institute of Medicine has drawn national attention to the widespread phenomenon of

medical errors. In its call for action, it emphasized that most errors are attributable to error-prone

systems rather than individuals. But it also made clear that the public needs protection from

“unsafe practitioners” who present danger to patients. 
Managed Care and the Data Bank iii OEI-01-99-00690

Our observations about the limitations of the downstream entities leads us to target seven issues

that call for greater attention if patients are to be adequately protected. These issues, listed

below, can be addressed by individual researchers, research organizations, and component

agencies with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

C Dealing with unsafe practitioners as part of patient safety efforts.

C Patient protection role of managed care organizations.

C Patient protection role of physician practice groups.

C Effectiveness of hospital privileging practices.

C Performance of licensure boards in quality-of-care cases.

C Managed care organizations’ understanding of their reporting responsibilities.

C Managed care organizations’ compliance in reporting adverse actions.

COMMENTS

Within the Department of Health and Human Services, we received comments from the Health

Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and

Quality (AHRQ), and the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). We also solicited and

received comments from the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP). Based on these

comments, we made a number of changes that are reflected in this final report. 

The HHS agencies expressed support for the thrust of our report. We draw particular attention

to HRSA’s readiness to join AHRQ in convening a conference, as we suggest, to address

practitioner monitoring roles and responsibilities of physician practice groups and managed care

organizations; to AHRQ’s commitment to consider our findings when implementing its patient

safety agenda; and to HCFA’s intention to examine its bi-annual, on-site monitoring of

Medicare+Choice organizations to see what changes might be warranted.

In its written response to our draft report and in follow-up interactions, AAHP emphasized two

points that we have addressed in this final report. One is that some managed care organizations

devote much more attention to clinical oversight than we indicated in our draft report. We

recognize that and have made that clear in this report. The second point is that to some degree

the low level of managed care organization reporting to the Data Bank may be attributable to

misunderstandings about their responsibility to report directly to the Data Bank rather than to

State licensure boards. We find this explanation plausible and, accordingly, have urged HRSA to

conduct outreach to managed care organizations to clear up any such misunderstandings.
Managed Care and the Data Bank OEI-01-99-00690

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................ i

INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 1

EXTENT OF REPORTING 

Managed care organizations rarely report adverse events to the Data Bank ............. 4

But they frequently query the Data Bank ....................................... 4

EXPLANATIONS

Possible explanations for low level of reporting .................................. 5

Limited focus on clinical oversight ............................................ 6

Dependence on downstream entities ........................................... 7

A BROADER CONCERN

Questionable performance of downstream entities ................................ 8

Hospitals ............................................................. 8

Physician practice groups ................................................ 8

State licensure boards ................................................... 9

ISSUES WARRANTING ATTENTION

Dealing with unsafe practitioners as part of patient safety efforts. ................... 10

Patient protection role of MCOs ............................................. 11

Patient protection role of physician practice groups .............................. 11

Effectiveness of hospital privileging practices .................................. 11

Performance of licensure boards in quality-of-care cases .......................... 12

MCOs’ understanding of their reporting responsibility ........................... 12

MCOs’ compliance in reporting adverse actions. ................................ 12

COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT REPORT ....................................... 13

APPENDICES

A. Comments on the draft report ............................................ 15

B. OIG reports on quality assurance ......................................... 27

C. Endnotes ............................................................ 31
Managed Care and the Data Bank 1 OEI-01-99-00690

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE

In this study we started out with the intention of: (1) determining the extent to which managed

care organizations are reporting adverse actions they take against health care practitioners to the

National Practitioner Data Bank and (2) identifying the factors that influence their level of

reporting. As we became more aware of the explanations for a low level of reporting, we

developed a broader concern that goes beyond our initial intent. That concern centers on the

limitations of the entities that managed care organizations increasingly rely upon to protect patients

from poorly performing practitioners. In the report, we elaborate on that concern and review 1

ways in which it might be addressed.

BACKGROUND

National Practitioner Data Bank

In 1986, prompted by reports that physicians who lost their licenses to practice in one State were

continuing their practice in another, Congress established the National Practitioner Data Bank

(Data Bank). As set forth in the enabling legislation, the Data Bank serves as a national

repository that State licensure boards and health care entities can draw upon to help them make

more informed decisions concerning the licensing, credentialing, and, where necessary, the

disciplining of physicians and other health care practitioners. Its fundamental aim is to help 2

protect patients from poorly performing practitioners.

Toward that end, Congress mandated that certain types of information be reported to the Data

Bank. This information is the essential raw material of the Data Bank. It includes (1) medical

malpractice payments made by insurers on behalf of physicians and dentists and (2) adverse

actions taken by State medical or dental boards, professional societies, and health care

organizations, such as hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs). For these

organizations, reportable actions encompass all professional review determinations that affect a

physician’s or dentist’s clinical privileges for more than 30 days and voluntary surrenders or

restrictions by physicians or dentists when they are under investigation for possible professional

incompetence or improper conduct.

Practitioner-specific information in the Data Bank is not available to the general public. But the

statute stipulates that the information can be made available, upon request, to licensure boards

and health care entities (including MCOs) that perform peer review functions. Further, it

mandates that hospitals query the Data Bank as part of the application process for practitioners

seeking clinical privileges and every 2 years for those having such privileges. The Data Bank,
Managed Care and the Data Bank 2 OEI-01-99-00690

administered under the direction of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of

the Department of Health and Human Services, has been operating since September 1990. 

Prior Inquiry on Hospital Reporting

In 1995, we examined the extent of hospital reporting to the Data Bank. We found that from

September 1, 1990 to December 31, 1993, about 75 percent of hospitals in the United States

had never reported an adverse action to the Data Bank. Our report also cited four issues that

warranted further analysis to determine whether this level of reporting constituted a problem that

must be addressed:

C There may be few practitioners with serious performance problems;

C Some hospitals may be responding to poorly performing practitioners in ways that do not

require reporting to the Data Bank;

C Some hospitals may be de-emphasizing or even avoiding adverse actions against poorly

performing physicians; and

C Some reportable hospital actions may not, in fact, be reported to the Data Bank.3

In response to our recommendations, HRSA convened a national conference examining the

minimal reporting and funded a study that examined hospital reporting in more depth.4

But by the end of the decade, the situation was not much different: 60 percent of the hospitals still

had not reported a single adverse event to the Data Bank.5

This Inquiry

In this inquiry, conducted at the request of HRSA’s Division of Quality Assurance, we focus on

MCO reporting of adverse actions to the Data Bank. Like hospitals, they must report to the

Data Bank any actions they take against affiliated practitioners that affect their clinical privileges

for more than 30 days. Their cooperation in carrying out this reporting requirement is important

because MCOs have come to represent a significant potential source of information for the Data

Bank. Enrollment in MCOs increased from 34 million in 1990 to 81 million in 1999. During the

same period, Medicare enrollment in MCOs increased from 1.6 million to 6 million; Medicaid

from 1.4 million to 11 million.6

Our quantitative analysis in this report drew on data in the Data Bank for the period from

September 1, 1990 to September 30, 1999. In assembling the data on MCO reporting to the 7

Data Bank, we used an inclusive definition of MCOs, one that includes Health Maintenance

Organizations and Preferred Provider Organizations.8

Our qualitative analysis aimed to offer some understanding of factors influencing MCO reporting

to the Data bank. We held telephone discussions with medical and/or executive leadership of six

MCOs located in different parts of the country; in four of these instances, the MCO officials

represented nationally based organizations (and therefore were relevant to hundreds of subsidiary

health plans and many thousands of enrollees and affiliated practitioners). After the issuance of
Managed Care and the Data Bank 3 OEI-01-99-00690

our draft report, we held a focus group session with officials from the American Association of

Health Plans and with medical directors and other officials from five additional MCOs. 

We held other discussions with two consumer advocates, two knowledgeable experts on the

credentialing process, a health care attorney whose clients include MCOs, and two senior

officials at a national managed care accrediting organization. We conducted a literature review,

focusing on literature that helped to explain the role of MCOs in monitoring the performance of

practitioners. And, finally, we drew on more than 15 years of our own work concerning quality

assurance (see appendix B for a complete list of our reports on quality assurance).

We begin our presentation by presenting data on MCO reporting to the Data Bank. We then

turn to a discussion of possible explanations and to an elaboration of the broader concern that

emerged from our review. We close by offering a number of issues calling for further analysis. 

We conducted this inspection in accordance with the Quality Standards for Inspections issued

by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.
Managed Care and the Data Bank 4 OEI-01-99-00690

EXTENT OF REPORTING

For health care entities seeking to protect patients from poor care, adverse action reports serve

as an important signal. They identify practitioners who have been disciplined because of peer

concerns about their competence and/or conduct. These practitioners have been found

responsible for actions that adversely affect or could adversely affect the health or welfare of

patients. It is the responsibility of entities that hire or affiliate with physicians or dentists to

consider carefully such reports and determine whether or under what conditions they should allow

practitioners identified in these adverse action reports to treat patients. It is also the responsibility

of these entities to regularly review the performance of their own practitioners and, when called

for, to take adverse actions and report them to the Data Bank.

As the Data Bank became institutionalized in the 1990s, health care organizations have come to

rely upon it as a significant tool in their credentialing processes. Hospitals, which are mandated 9

to query the Data Bank, have long since become accustomed to using it. Managed care

organizations, even though not required to query the Data Bank, have regularly been doing so and

now account for about one-half of all queries. From September 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999,

they queried the Data Bank more than 8 million times. At an average cost of about $4 a query, 10

this amounts to more than $30 million they spent during the 1990s to query the Data Bank.

Yet, as the data below reveal, the MCOs provide little input to the Data bank. They do little to

contribute to its usefulness as a credentialing resource either for themselves or for others who

look to the Data Bank as a patient protection tool.

Managed care organizations rarely submit adverse action reports

to the Data Bank.

From September 1, 1990 to September 30,1999, they reported only 715 adverse

actions to the Data Bank. 

During a period when enrollment in managed care grew to account for over 100 million

Americans, MCOs took reportable actions against fewer than 1,000 practitioners. The rate of

reporting increased slightly over the past decade. In 1991, the Data bank received 32 reports;

by 1998, the Data Bank received 116 reports.

Eighty-four percent of the managed care organizations currently registered with

the Data Bank (1,176 out of 1,401) never reported an adverse action to the Data

Bank.

Among the 225 that reported an adverse action, almost half did so only once. At the other end,

three reported more than 20 adverse actions; they are located in Arizona, Florida, and Ohio.11
Managed Care and the Data Bank 5 OEI-01-99-00690

EXPL ANATIONS

We recognize that no clear basis exists for how much MCO reporting to the Data Bank should

occur. However, given that managed care has become the dominant form of health care, that

close to 100 million individuals are enrolled in MCOs, and that hundreds of thousands of

physicians and dentists are associated with them, less than 1,000 adverse action reports during

the 1990s appears to be low. At the least, this low level of reporting calls for some explanation.

Among the possible explanations we identified that deserve consideration are the following:

• The level of reporting may be appropriate. It appears unlikely to us, but we must recognize

this explanation as one possibility. Supporting it is the contention, as we will address shortly, that

MCOs look to other bodies to take the kind of actions that are reportable to the Data Bank.

• MCOs may not be submitting reportable actions. This possibility was underscored during

our focus group session, when some MCO officials offered their understanding that direct MCO

reporting to the Data Bank is not required. They indicated that they submit reports to the State

medical board, not the Data Bank. In any case, we have no basis for knowing how often 12

reportable actions are not reported.13

• MCOs may be responding to poorly performing practitioners in ways that do not require

reporting to the Data Bank. These might involve adverse actions that are below the threshold

of a reportable action. They might also involve educational efforts that are not punitive in nature

and that are in accord with quality improvement precepts that seek to establish safe environments

for acknowledging errors and/or correcting deficiencies. From this vantage point, a report to the

Data Bank can be seen as a policing action that undermines improvement efforts and that ought to

be avoided except in the most extreme circumstances.

• MCOs may lack sufficient access to information to determine if an adverse action is

warranted against a practitioner. Because of concerns about legal liability and other reasons,

hospitals, physician practice groups, and even MCOs themselves are reluctant to share

information they have about the performance of individual practitioners and to divulge peer review

information that has traditionally been regarded as confidential. Furthermore, the patient 14

information that is needed to make such informed judgments about performance tends to be

scattered among many settings, such as a physician’s office, a hospital, an ambulatory surgical

center, and a laboratory. Thus, even those MCOs that may be inclined to carefully monitor the 15

performance of individual practitioners are likely to have a difficult time doing so with a high level

of confidence.
Managed Care and the Data Bank 6 OEI-01-99-00690

Each of these explanations deserves attention as part of any complete examination of the factors

influencing MCO reporting to the Data Bank. But as we synthesized the information we obtained

through our interviews and literature review, two explanations stood out as being especially

convincing. They are concerned with basic characteristics of the health care marketplace as it has

evolved in recent years. These explanations suggest that MCOs rarely consider adverse actions

against practitioners, let alone take actions and then not report them to the Data Bank.

The two most likely explanations for low level of reporting

Limited focus on clinical oversight

Some MCOs devote considerable attention to the quality of care provided to their enrollees. 

They issue practice guidelines, collect and review indicators of physician performance, monitor

adverse events, and, as needed, conduct peer review. But the clear thrust of our interviews and 16

review of literature is that evolving conditions in the health care marketplace have contributed to a

more limited focus on clinical oversight by MCOs. To a considerable degree, as some managed

care officials themselves emphasized to us, their organizations are functioning more as insurance

companies than as clinical entities. They described their organizations more as administrative

entities than as integrated health care delivery systems that coordinate, monitor, and assure the

quality of care that individual practitioners provide. 

Many physicians, it seems, share this assessment. One MCO medical director told us about

focus group sessions that her organization had conducted with physicians in its network. 

According to the focus groups, only a few physicians considered the MCO as a clinical

organization. The majority viewed it as nothing more than a “bill paying organization.”

Below, we identify three characteristics of the current managed care environment that buttress the

observation that MCOs tend to play a limited role in conducting clinical oversight of their

practitioners:

Heavy reliance on contracted panels of physicians rather than salaried physicians. The

managed care organizations of today rarely function as staff model health maintenance

organizations with salaried physicians. Instead, they tend to be loose networks that contract 17

with individual physicians. These physicians, in turn, typically are aligned with multiple MCOs.18

Managed care officials reported that while both staff and contracted physicians go through a

rigorous process of credentialing, the ongoing quality review of contracted physicians is distinctly

less than has been the case for staff physicians.

Marketplace emphasis on price. In recent years much national attention has focused on health

care quality. But the clear experience of the health care marketplace is that purchasers and

consumers have emphasized price in selecting health plans. This has been well documented in

recent studies. It means that MCOs often have little incentive to devote many resources to

quality assessment and improvement. One managed care 19
Managed Care and the Data Bank 7 OEI-01-99-00690

executive, whose organization had taken a number of important quality initiatives, including some

aimed at poorly performing practitioners, expressed his frustration over how minimally these

initiatives were rewarded by the marketplace.

Consumer emphasis on access to physicians. Consumers have sent a strong and clear

message to MCOs and to employers that they want wide access to individual physicians. 

20

Many States have passed laws facilitating such choice and most MCOs have developed product

lines offering consumers less restrictive health plan arrangements that afford them extensive choice

of physicians. In this environment, MCOs find that any removal of individual physicians from their

panels, even for quality reasons, can be unpopular with enrollees because it diminishes choice. In

the current marketplace, MCO officials tell us that assuring widespread patient access to

physicians has much more drawing power in attracting or retaining enrollees than does rigorous

quality assurance that, to some extent, could restrict access.

Reliance on downstream entities--hospitals, physician practice groups, and

State licensure boards--to conduct quality monitoring of practitioners

Given their own limited role in protecting patients from poorly performing practitioners, MCO

officials emphasized to us that they rely on the aforementioned entities to perform that critical

patient protection function. They explained that hospitals, physician practice groups, and

licensure boards are more directly concerned with the delivery of care (compared with the

upstream MCOs) and are therefore in a better position to identify questionable performers and to

take actions that could call for reporting to the Data Bank.21

As an ongoing check on the competency of practitioners, MCO executives told us that they rely

heavily on the privileging functions of hospitals. This is especially true for physician specialists. 22

Some MCOs, in fact, use their contracts as ways of fostering such links--for example, requiring

practitioners to notify the MCO of any changes in their hospital privileging status or requiring a

hospital to notify the MCO of any change in such status.
Managed Care and the Data Bank 8 OEI-01-99-00690

A BROADER CONCERN

Limitations of the downstream entities that MCOs rely upon

The heavy reliance that MCOs place on hospitals, physician practice groups, and State licensure

boards accentuates the importance of these bodies’ efforts to identify and deal with poorly

performing practitioners. For patients, these bodies serve as a vital front line of protection. In

this study, we did not examine the performance of these downstream entities, but we know from

our prior studies and from the health care literature that there is ample basis for questioning how

well they protect patients from those few practitioners who can be dangerous.

Hospitals find it difficult to hold individual practitioners responsible for poor

care and to undertake system reforms that foster patient safety.

MCO representatives told us that they rely on hospital privileging and quality review actions to

make certain that practitioners provide safe care of high quality. But hospitals are hard-pressed

to provide these expected safeguards. We have already noted in this report that 60 percent of

the hospitals in the U.S. have never reported an adverse action to the Data Bank. Our prior

work has shown that hospital privileging actions can be cursory and that neither the process of

accrediting nor certifying hospitals is likely to detect substandard patterns of care or individual

practitioners with questionable skills. And the extensive literature on medical errors documents 23

many of the factors that inhibit hospitals and other health care providers from taking preventive

actions to reduce the likelihood of harm caused by the treatment process.

These shortcomings in hospital quality review are especially alarming given that hospitals are

places where inappropriate care can lead to unnecessary harm. This evidence is documented in

the professional literature and is frequently described in the media.24,25

Physician practice groups appear to be similarly constrained.

Thousand of practice groups of various kinds exist across the country. The collaboration and

peer review that exist within them certainly serve as an important ongoing force for high quality

health care. Yet, we know little about how and how rigorously these physician practice groups

protect the public from those few poorly performing practitioners who may pose a danger.26

 There is, we believe, reason to have some concern on this matter. From September 1, 1990 to

September 30, 1999, group practices reported only 60 actions to the Data Bank. We know

from our reviews of State licensure boards and from regular discussions with licensure board

officials that these groups rarely report one of their colleagues to a licensure 
Managed Care and the Data Bank 9 OEI-01-99-00690

board for investigation. In some cases, groups that find a colleague to be practicing 27

substandard care may merely let that colleague go rather than report him or her to the licensure

board. That action helps protect patients relying on the particular physician group, but it leaves

the physician free to practice in another setting and perhaps expose patients to harm elsewhere. 

Indeed, if the group practice took no official action against the physician, the next organization

that credentials the physician will likely remain uninformed about the prior performance problems.

State licensure boards struggle with quality-of-care cases.

Quality-of-care cases are complex, time-consuming, and costly to pursue. In our studies over the

years, we have given particular attention to State medical licensure boards and to the significant

constraints they face in seeking to ensure the public that licensees meet minimum standards of

care. These constraints include significant resource shortages, minimal referrals from health care

providers (such as hospitals and MCOs), limited authority to collect evidence that can reveal a

pattern of poor performance, and a fragmented investigatory process. In recent years, these 28

boards appear to have become more attentive to quality-of-care cases and to have strengthened

their capacity to address such cases. But numerous inquiries indicate that they still function with

significant limitations.29
Managed Care and the Data Bank 10 OEI-01-99-00690

ISSUES W ARRANTING ATTENTION

Recently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has drawn national attention to the widespread

phenomenon of medical errors and to the kind of measures that can be taken to increase patient

safety. In its call for action, the IOM emphasized that most errors are attributable to error- 30

prone systems rather than individuals. Accordingly, it urged reform efforts that focus on a

redesign of such systems. But the IOM also made clear that as part of an overall effort to

promote patient safety, it is important to give attention to the existence of “unsafe practitioners”

who present danger to patients. It recognized that some individuals may be “incompetent,

impaired, uncaring, or may even have criminal intent.” “The public,” it added, “needs defensible 31

assurance that such individuals will be dealt with effectively and prevented from harming

patients.” An important part of system reform, it made clear, is to ensure that adequate systems 32

exist to identify and deal with poorly performing practitioners.

Our observations about the limitations of downstream entities that MCOs rely upon to foster

patient safety suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to providing the assurance that the

IOM calls for. Below we identify seven key issues that we believe warrant greater attention if

patients are to be provided improved protection against “unsafe practitioners.” These are issues

that can be addressed by individual researchers, research organizations such as the Institute of

Medicine, and by component agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services--most

especially the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Health Resources and

Services Administration (HRSA), and the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA).

Dealing with unsafe practitioners as part of patient safety efforts

How can this best be accomplished? What kind of initiatives appear to be most promising and

why? The IOM report suggests that these are important questions worth addressing. Within

HHS, AHRQ serves as a focal point for promoting patient safety. Through its research,

demonstration, and public education efforts, it could play a valuable role in helping MCOs,

hospitals, physician practice groups, and other health care providers determine how identifying

and responding to poor performers could be integrated into system reform efforts intended to

promote patient safety. In this regard, AHRQ could devote particular attention to the kind of

educational and remedial efforts that could be directed to practitioners who have been

experiencing performance problems. Given that an implicit aim of the Data Bank is to help

protect the public from harm caused by such practitioners, HRSA’s Division of Quality

Assurance, which operates the Data Bank, could play a helpful collaborative role in determining

how best to deal with unsafe practitioners.33

Patient protection role of MCOs

Our limited inquiry suggests that the primary patient protection role carried out directly by MCOs

rests in their practitioner credentialing efforts. A fuller inquiry could examine the 
Managed Care and the Data Bank 11 OEI-01-99-00690

degree to which that is, in fact, the case and the level of protections actually afforded by these

credentialing efforts. Are some more effective than others? If so, why? For the Medicare and

Medicaid programs, it is especially important for HCFA and State Medicaid agencies, which

serve as purchasers of care on behalf of their beneficiaries, to examine the kind of practitioner

monitoring actions they expect of MCOs and how fully they hold them responsible for those

actions. To the extent that MCOs are not held responsible for protecting patients from unsafe 34

practitioners, then increased scrutiny must be directed to the downstream entities seen to have

that responsibility. 

Patient protection role of physician practice groups

Given the dependence that MCO representatives say they place on the quality monitoring efforts

of physician practice groups, it becomes increasingly important to understand the extent and

nature of these efforts. With so many of these groups and with so many different arrangements

under which they function, this can be a difficult undertaking. But it appears to us that it is one

that warrants attention. How can we explain that in the 1990s these groups reported only about

60 adverse actions to the Data Bank, or that they rarely make referrals to State medical boards? 

How do they deal with their own colleagues who are not performing adequately? Are there

promising quality monitoring approaches being undertaken by some of these groups? Better

understanding of these questions can be helpful in improving the protections afforded in

nonhospital settings. It would be helpful for some HHS component to convene a conference that

addresses the practitioner monitoring roles and responsibilities of physician practice groups and

MCOs.

Effectiveness of hospital privileging practices

In our prior review addressing the external review of hospital quality, we recommended that

HCFA give greater attention to the oversight of hospital privileging practices. This study adds a

measure of urgency to that recommendation because senior MCO officials emphasized to us that

they rely heavily on hospital privileging practices as a quality assurance check. This privileging

function is a vital patient safeguard, one that goes beyond the credentialing function and one that

can continually assess a practitioner’s competency. It warrants greater scrutiny. We expect to

look more fully at this issue as we continue to monitor the adequacy of the external review of

hospital quality.

Performance of licensure boards in quality-of-care cases

These boards provide a vital front line of protection for patients. In its report on medical errors, 35

the IOM recognized the key role that they play in fostering patient safety and indicated that

“existing licensing and accreditation should be strengthened to ensure that all health care

professionals are assessed periodically on both skills and knowledge for practice. Within 36

HRSA, the Division of Medicine in the Bureau of Health Professions has a long association with

State licensure boards. It is well-positioned to work with these boards (and their associations) to

find ways in which they can improve their capacity to identify and act on quality-of-care cases
Managed Care and the Data Bank 12 OEI-01-99-00690

and be held appropriately accountable for their performance in this area. This is an area that the 37

Office of Inspector General reviewed extensively a number of years ago and intends to revisit

soon.38

Managed care organizations’ understanding of their reporting

responsibility

The fact that at least some MCOs do not recognize that they are expected to submit adverse

action reports directly to the Data Bank, rather than through a State medical board, is an

important insight that emerges from our inquiry. We do not know the extent of this

misunderstanding, but it is possible that it could explain to some degree the small number of MCO

adverse action reports to the Data Bank. Accordingly, to clear up any possible

misunderstanding, we urge HRSA to conduct outreach to inform MCOs of their reporting

responsibilities.

Managed care organizations’ compliance in reporting adverse

actions.

Finally, it is important to know more about compliance efforts being taken to ensure that MCOs

and other entities are, in fact, reporting adverse actions to the Data Bank. We urge HRSA to

follow through with the request for proposal it is considering in this regard. We also suggest that

further attention be given to how, and how thoroughly, accrediting bodies ensure that reporting

responsibilities are carried out.
Managed Care and the Data Bank 13 OEI-01-99-00690

COMMENTS ON THE

DRAFT REPORT

Within the Department of Health and Human Services, we received comments on the draft report

from the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Agency for Healthcare Research and

Quality, and the Health Care Financing Administration. In addition, we received comments from

the American Association of Health Plans. Based on these comments, we made some changes

that are reflected in this final report. Below, we summarize the comments of the respondents and

offer our responses in italics. Appendix A contains the full text of each set of comments

Health Resources and Services and Administration

HRSA expressed its readiness to work with other HHS components, particularly AHRQ, to

sponsor a conference, as we suggest, that would address practitioner monitoring roles and

responsibilities of physician practice groups and MCOs. The agency underscored the importance

of MCOs developing accountability systems directed to unsafe practitioners. In reviewing our

possible explanations for the low level of MCO reporting to the Data Bank, it suggested that we

could provide greater emphasis on our explanation that MCOs “may be responding to poorly

performing practitioners in ways that do not require reporting to the Data Bank.” It based that

statement on comments it has heard that when MCOs wish to get rid of poorly performing

physicians, they frequently “terminate without cause,” and thereby free themselves of any

reporting responsibility. In addition, it suggested two technical changes that we reflected in the

final report.

We urge HRSA and AHRQ to follow through with the proposed conference; it could

contribute significantly to understandings about the clinical oversight being undertaken in

managed care settings. We understand HRSA’s concern about the possibility of MCOs

evading reporting responsibilities by avoiding the peer review process and terminating

physicians without cause. But we have no basis for knowing if, in fact, that is happening,

and, if so, how often. However, on the basis of the focus group discussion we held with a

number of MCO representatives after the draft report was issued, we did become aware

that misunderstandings about reporting responsibilities may be contributing to some

degree to the low level of MCO reporting. Accordingly, in the final report, we added a

suggestion that HRSA conduct outreach to help managed care organizations understand

their responsibility for submitting adverse action reports to the Data Bank.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

As with the other Departmental components, we had considerable interaction with AHRQ on our

working draft report and incorporated a number of their suggestions in the draft report. In its

comments on the draft report, the agency agreed that research is needed along the lines we

suggested. It indicated that it would consider the report’s findings when implementing its patient

safety agenda during the fiscal year. 
Managed Care and the Data Bank 14 OEI-01-99-00690

We look forward to working with AHRQ to assist in this process and underscore the

importance of incorporating within patient safety efforts a component that helps identify

effective ways of dealing with substandard practitioners.

Health Care Financing Administration

HCFA, after summarizing relevant laws that concern MCO reporting, emphasized that

Medicare+Choice organizations with which it contracts are expected to adhere to all applicable

non-Medicare laws. It indicated that during its biannual on-site monitoring visits of these

organizations, it reviews credentialing files. It added that it will consider whether any changes or

additions to its regulations are warranted. This comment addresses our suggestion that HCFA

examine the obligations that it and the States impose on MCOs that enroll Medicare or Medicaid

beneficiaries. 

HCFA noted that we made substantive changes responsive to its comments on our working draft

report. But it noted that we did not provide documentation on our assertions that staff model

HMOs have better control over quality than MCOs that contract with physicians and that MCOs

have little incentive to devote many resources to quality assurance.

On the first point above, our observation was that MCOs’ quality review of contracted

physicians was less than that of staff physicians. It is based on our interviews and reflects

the lesser leverage that MCOs tend to have over contracted physicians who often are

associated with multiple MCOs. On the second point, we omitted the reference about

incentives, but continue to stress the marketplace emphasis on price rather than quality.

American Association of Health Plans

A central point of AAHP’s comments and our subsequent focus group meeting with AAHP

officials and medical directors convened by them was that managed care organizations play a

more active role in addressing quality of care issues than we indicated in our draft report.

As a result of that meeting and further conversations with MCO officials, our discussion in

the final report is more nuanced on MCO’s quality assurance role. We recognize the

significant attention they give to practitioner credentialing and acknowledge that some

MCOs give considerable attention to the quality of care provided to their enrollees. But

drawing on the bulk of our interviews and the health care literature, we still conclude that

marketplace conditions contribute to what in the main is a limited MCO focus on clinical

oversight.

Another important point that emerged as a result of our interactions with AAHP is that some

MCOs have misunderstood their responsibility to report adverse actions directly to the Data

Bank rather than to State licensure boards. We found this explanation for the low level of

reporting to be important enough to integrate into our possible explanations of the low

level of reporting and to urge HRSA to conduct outreach to MCOs to clear up any such

misunderstandings. It is possible that such outreach could result in a significant increase in

the number of MCO reports submitted to the Data Bank.
APPENDIX A

Managed Care and the Data Bank 15 OEI-01-99-00690

Comments on the Draft Report

Page

Health Resources and Services Administration ...................................... 16

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality ....................................... 20

Health Care Financing Administration ............................................ 21

American Association of Health Plans ............................................ 23
APPENDIX A

Managed Care and the Data Bank 16 OEI-01-99-00690
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Managed Care and the Data Bank 25 OEI-01-99-00690
APPENDIX A

Managed Care and the Data Bank 26 OEI-01-99-00690
APPENDIX B

Managed Care and the Data Bank 27 OEI-01-99-00690

 

OIG Reports on Quality Assurance

State Licensure Boards

Office of Inspector General, Medical Licensure and Discipline: An Overview, P-01-86-

00064, June 1986.

Office of Inspector General, State Licensure and Discipline of Dentists, OAI-01-88-00580,

August 1988.

Office of Inspector General, State Licensure and Discipline of Podiatrists, OAI-01-88-00583,

December 1988.

Office of Inspector General, State Licensure and Discipline of Chiropractors, OAI-01-88-

00581, January 1989.

Office of Inspector General, State Licensure and Discipline of Optometrists, OAI-01-88-

00582, February 1989.

Office of Inspector General, State Discipline of Pharmacists, OAI-01-90-89020, July 1990.

Office of Inspector General, State Medical Boards and Medical Discipline, OEI-01-89-

00560, August 1990.

Office of Inspector General, State Medical Boards and Medical Discipline: A State by State

Review, OEI-01-89-00561, August 1990.

Office of Inspector General, Performance Indicators, Annual Reports, and State Medical

Discipline: A State-by-State Review, OEI-01-89-00563, July 1991.

Office of Inspector General, Quality Assurance Activities of Medical Licensure Authorities in

the United States and Canada, OEI-01-89-00562, February 1992.

Office of Inspector General, Federal Initiatives to Improve State Medical Boards’

Performance, OEI-01-93-00020, February 1993.
APPENDIX B

Managed Care and the Data Bank 28 OEI-01-99-00690

Office of Inspector General, State Medical Boards and Quality-of-Care Cases: Promising

Approaches, OEI-01-92-00050, February 1993.

Office of Inspector General, The Licensure of Out-of-State Dentists, OEI-01-92-00820,

August 1993.

Office of Inspector General, State Dental Board and Dental Discipline, OEI-01-92-00821,

August 1993.

Providers

Office of Inspector General, The External Review of Hospital Quality: A Call for Greater

Accountability, OEI-01-97-00050, July 1999.

Office of Inspector General, The External Review of Hospital Quality: The Role of

Accreditation, OEI-01-97-00051, July 1999.

Office of Inspector General, The External Review of Hospital Quality: The Role of Medicare

Certification, OEI-01-97-00052, July 1999.

Office of Inspector General, The External Role of Hospital Quality: Holding the Reviewers

Accountable, OEI-01-97-00053, July 1999.

Office of Inspector General, The External Quality Review of Psychiatric Hospitals, OEI-01-

99-00160, May 2000.

Office of Inspector General, External Quality Review of Dialysis Facilities: A Call for Greater

Accountability, OEI-01-99-00050, June 2000.

Office of Inspector General, External Quality Review of Dialysis Facilities: Two Promising

Approaches, OEI-01-99-00051, June 2000.

Outpatient Surgery

Office of Inspector General, Outpatient Surgery: Medical Necessity and Quality of Care, OEI07-89-00100, March 1991.

Office of Inspector General, Oversight of Outpatient Surgery, OEI-07-91-00690, May 1992.
APPENDIX B

Managed Care and the Data Bank 29 OEI-01-99-00690

Office of Inspector General, Impact of Regulating Outpatient Surgery, OEI-07-91-00691,

May 1992.

Office of Inspector General, Physician Office Surgery, OEI-07-91-00680, June 1993.

National Practitioner Data Bank

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank Malpractice Reporting

Requirements, OEI-01-90-00521, April 1992.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank: Profile of Matches, OEI-01-

90-00522, April 1992.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank: Usefulness and Impact of

Reports to Hospitals, OEI-01-90-00520, February 1993.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank: Usefulness and Impact of

Reports to State Licensing Boards, OEI-01-90-00523, March 1993.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank: Profile of Matches Update,

OEI-01-94-00031, August 1994.

Office of Inspector General, Hospital Reporting to the National Practitioner Data Bank, OEI01-94-00050, February 1995.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank Reports to Hospitals: Their

Usefulness and Impact, OEI-01-94-00030, April 1995.

Office of Inspector General, National Practitioner Data Bank Reports to Managed Care

Organizations: Their Usefulness and Impact, OEI-01-94-00032, April 1995.

Peer Review Organizations

Office of Inspector General, The Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review Organizations

(PROs): Quality Review Activities, OAI-01-88-00570, August 1988.

Office of Inspector General, The Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review Organizations

(PROs): Program Sanction Activities, OAI-01-88-00571, August 1988.
APPENDIX B

Managed Care and the Data Bank 30 OEI-01-99-00690

Office of Inspector General, The Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review Organizations

(PROs): An Exploration of Program Effectiveness, OAI-01-00572, January 1989.

Office of Inspector General, Educating Physicians Responsible for Poor Medical Care: A

Review of the Peer Review Organizations’ Efforts, OEI-89-00020, February 1992.

Office of Inspector General, Peer Review Organizations and State Medical Boards: A Vital

Link, OEI-01-92-00530, April 1993.

Office of Inspector General, The Sanction Referral Authority of Peer Review Organizations,

OEI-01-92-00250, March 1993.

Office of Inspector General, The Beneficiary Complaint Process of the Medicare Peer Review

Organizations, OEI-01-93-00250, November 1995.

Office of Inspector General, Medicare Peer Review Organizations’ Role in Identifying and

Responding to Poor Performers, OEI-01-93-00251, December 1995.

Office of Inspector General, Monitoring and Evaluating the Healthcare Quality Improvement

Program, OEI-01-98-0040, August, 1998.

External Quality Review Organizations

Office of Inspector General, Lessons Learned from Medicaid’s Use of External Quality Review

Organizations, OEI-01-98-00210, August 1998.

Managed Care

Office of Inspector General, Medicaid Managed Care: The Use of Surveys as a Beneficiary

Protection Tool, OEI-01-95-00280, May 1997.

Office of Inspector General, Medicare’s Oversight of Managed Care: Monitoring Plan

Performance, OEI-01-96-00190, April 1998.
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 31 OEI-01-99-00690

Endnotes

1. We use the term “poorly performing practitioners” to refer to those whose knowledge and/or skills

are below professionally accepted standards in one or more areas of their practice. We recognize that

there are complex factors that can be responsible, and that the condition can be temporary in nature. 

Whatever the causes or duration, however, patients face unnecessary risk when practitioners are

performing below acceptable standards. Our intent in this report is not to urge that practitioners be

punished for their poor performance, but to encourage adequate attention to protecting patients from

harm. Interventions directed to these practitioners could well be educational or remedial in nature as

long as adequate attention is given to the safety of patients during the educational/remedial process.

2. The Data Bank refers to other health care professionals as licensed health care practitioners. It

defines them as individuals (other than physicians) who are licensed or otherwise authorized by the

State to provide health care. According to the Data Bank, medical malpractice payments comprised

75 percent of reports submitted to the Data Bank from 1990 through 1999,.

3. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector, General Hospital Reporting to the

National Practitioner Data Bank, OEI-01-94-00050, February, 1995

4. Laura-Mae Baldwin et al., “Hospital Peer Review and the National Practitioner Data Bank: Clinical

Privileges Report,” Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (July 28, 1999): 4: 349-355.

5. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, 1999

National Practitioner Data Bank Annual Report, May 2000, p.22.

6. Including preferred provider organization with 80 to 100 million enrollees, over 150 million

Americans are enrolled in some form of managed care plan. The enrollment data for Medicaid

managed care are from 1991 through 1999. Interstudy Publications Press Release for HMO Industry

Report 10.1, April 26, 2000 [http://www.hmodata.com/, accessed July, 2000.]

7. In our analysis of reporting levels of clinical privileging actions, we used the year the action was

originally reported to the Data Bank. The variable is called ORIGYEAR in the Reports Research Files. 

We did not analyze data from the last 3 months of 1999. Because HRSA is reclassifying action codes

for its web-based reporting system, the data were inconsistent with data from the previous 9 years. We

excluded the last 3 months of 1999 because of these inconsistencies.

8. The Data Bank originally used variables named HMO and PPO. But because many different forms

of managed care plans started to emerge, the Data Bank has gone to an all-encompassing variable

called MCO to designate all of these different types of managed care plans.

9. In a report summarizing the deliberations of a meeting of the Federal Credentialing Program, the

following definition of credentialing was offered: “Credentialing is employed to ensure the delivery of

high quality health care by appropriately qualified professionals. Credentialing includes the verification
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 32 OEI-01-99-00690

of education and training; the currency of state or jurisdictional licenses; registrations or certifications;

proper authorization to dispense drugs; and the status of hospital privileges. It also includes a review

for malpractice claims, criminal history and past adverse actions against a license.” See Health

Resources and Services Administration, Center for Health Professions, Proceedings of

Demonstration Project Working Meeting of the Federal Credentialing Program, Albuquerque,

New Mexico, July 11-14, 1999, p.8.

10. Two factors help explain the large numbers of MCO queries. One is that accreditation standards

set forth by the National Commission for Quality Assurance call for MCOs to query the Data Bank

when credentialing and recredentialing physicians in their networks. The other is that many physicians

are associated with multiple MCOs and thus are subjected to multiple queries. For example, a

physician affiliated with five MCOs could well be the focus of ten or more queries every 2 years as a

routine part of the credentialing and recredentialing process.

11. It is important to note that these numbers are for individual MCOs, whether or not they are part of

a larger corporation. In the Data Bank’s registration system, each MCO is listed separately, whether

or not it is part of a larger corporation including other MCOs.

12. Before the Data Bank allowed for electronic reporting of adverse events, MCOs, hospitals, and

other entities that provided adverse event reports to the Data Bank did so through the State licensure

board. They sent a paper copy of the report to the licensure board, which then sent it on to the Data

Bank. This earlier practice may contribute to an explanation for why some MCOs (and perhaps

hospitals and other entities) do not assume they are responsible for directly reporting to the Data Bank.

13. We do not know how fully, if at all, the accrediting bodies conduct compliance checks as part of

their accreditation process. We do know that the Department of Health and Human Services conducts

little such compliance checking of its own. However, within HHS, the Health Resources and Services

Administration is planning to issue a request for proposals that would develop a methodology for

reviewing compliance and conducting tests of the methodology in selected sites.

14. Hospitals, as well as physician practice groups, are not inclined to share peer review information

with MCOs. While various factors may help explain this lack of feedback, two appear most

fundamental. One is that peer review has traditionally been regarded as confidential information. Many

fear that opening it up will undermine the sense of collegiality upon which it is built and therefore

discourage peer review. The other factor is concern for legal liability--that whatever legal liability

protections are afforded in the statute, the entities and individuals engaged in peer review could be

subjecting themselves to costly and lengthy lawsuits.

15. Some MCOs have developed databases that incorporate information from patient encounters and

from patient satisfaction surveys, and have used this information as a monitoring tool, sometimes

disclosing it to payers and the public. But the message we received from our interviews was that even

in these cases, the data collection is seldom regarded as a tool for identifying and taking action against

practitioners who provide substandard care.
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 33 OEI-01-99-00690

16. Some MCO officials explained these processes to us in considerable detail.

17. For further discussion on the changing managed care marketplace, see Jon Gabel, “Ten Ways

HMOs have Changed During the 1990s,” Health Affairs 16 (May/June 1997) 3: 134-145. See also

Bruce E. Landon et al., “A Conceptual Model of the Effects on the Quality of Medical Care,” Journal

of the American Medical Association 279 (May 6, 1998) 17: 1377-1382, and James C. Robinson

and Lawrence P. Casalino, “Vertical Integration and Organizational Networks in Health Care,” Health

Affairs 15 (Spring 1996) 1: 7-22.

18. This is especially true for Independent Practice Associations (IPAs), which have become the

dominant form of physician practice group. Some MCOs, especially those in California, have been

looking to IPAs to conduct utilization review, credential physicians, and undertake other quality

improvement initiatives. For further discussion on IPAs, see Thomas Bodenheimer, “The American

Health Care System: Physicians and the Changing Marketplace,” The New England Journal of

Medicine 340 (February 18, 1999) 7: 584-588; Kevin Grumbach et al., “Independent Practice

Association Physician Groups in California,” Health Affairs 17 (May/June 1998) 3: 227-237; and

James C. Robinson, “Blended Payment Methods in Physician Organizations Under Managed Care,”

Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (October 6, 1999) 13: 1258-1263.

19. For further discussion on the preference for price over quality, see Robert H. Brook, “Managed

Care is not the Problem, Quality is,” Journal of the American Medical Association 278 (November

19, 1997): 1612-1614; M.E. Chernew and D.P. Scanlon, “Health Plan Report Cards and Insurance

Choice, Inquiry 35 (1998) 1: 9-22; Commonwealth Fund, “Employers Underutilize HEDIS Data,

Commonwealth Fund Quarterly (Summer 1998): 1-2; Judith H. Hibbard and Jacquelyn J. Jewitt,

“Will Quality Report Cards Help Consumers?” Health Affairs 16 (May/June 1997) 3: 218-228;

Martin Marshall et al., “The Public Release of Public Data: What do we Expect to Gain? A Review of

the Evidence, Journal of the American Medical Association 283 (April 12, 2000) 14: 1866-1874; 

J. Meyer et al., “Theory and Practice of Value - Based Purchasing: Lessons from the Pioneers,”

(Rockville, MD.: Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, 1997); Eric C. Schneider and Arnold

M. Epstein, “Use of Performance Reports: A Survey of Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery,”

Journal of the American Medical Association 279 (May 27, 1998) 20: 1638-1642; Anne Tumison

et al., “Choosing a Health Plan: What Information will Consumers Use?” 16 (May/June) 3: 229-238;

Commonwealth Fund, “Employers Underutilize HEDIS Data,” Commonwealth Fund Quarterly

(Summer 1998): 1-2; and R.A. Berenson, “Beyond Competition,” Health Affairs (March/April):171-

180.

20. For further discussion on the preference for access to physicians, see Catherine G. McLaughlin

and Paul B. Ginsburg, “Competition, Quality of Care, and the Role of the Consumer,” The Milbank

Quarterly 76 (November 4, 1998) 4: 737-743; J.D. Reshovsky et al., “Does Type of Health

Insurance affect Health Care Use and Assessment of Care among the Privately Insured?,” Health

Services Research 35 (April 2000); and Ralph Ullman et al., “Satisfaction and Choice: A View from

the Plans,” Health Affairs 16 (May/June 1997) 3: 209-217. 
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 34 OEI-01-99-00690

21. The reference here is to all boards responsible for the licensure and discipline of health

professionals, but in particular to medical licensure boards. Accordingly, our attention in this report

focuses on these State medical boards.

22. Privileging, in contrast to credentialing, focuses on the substance of a practitioner’s allowable

scope of practice for an organization. Here is the definition of privileging provided in the Federal

Credentialing Program report mentioned earlier: “Based upon the data collected in the credentialing

process, a hospital, through its medical staff section, or health plan through its membership process

determines the appropriate extent to professional practice to be granted to an individual health care

provider.” See Proceedings of Demonstration Project, p.9.

23. The following elaboration is from our report, “The External Review of Hospital Quality: The

Role of Accreditation,” OEI-01-97-00051, July 1999, pp. 16-17:

“A standard part of an accreditation survey is a review of hospitals’ own processes in ensuring

competence of their practitioners. But that review of credentialing and privileging offers, at

best, a preliminary and superficial assessment. It generally last 45 to 60 minutes, during which

the surveyor both interviews the medical staff leadership and reviews files (in some cases, the

hospital’s staff also reviews files). 

While the hospitals generally choose the files for review in the credentials session, they do so at

the direction of the surveyors, ensuring different privileges (active, courtesy, consulting, and

temporary, for example) and specialties are represented. But time is too short for any in-depth

review of these files. For example, in one hospital with over 500 active staff, the surveyor

reviewed three practitioners’ credentials and privileges. Even though he found a problem with

one of the three (a podiatrist who was performing surgery for which he is not privileged), the

surveyor reviewed no additional files.

The credentials session falls short in other ways, as well. While the surveyors do ask important

questions about the hospitals’ process for matching privileges to competencies and verifying

licences, we observed no surveyor ask how the hospital identified or dealt with physicians

whose knowledge or practice skills were marginal. Even though Federal law requires hospitals

to report any practitioner they have disciplined to the National Practitioner Data Bank, it is

unlikely that surveyors will make any determination about hospitals’ compliance with the law: 

Joint Commission standards do not currently reference the law for reporting to the Data Bank,

and the likelihood is low that surveyors will choose a file of a disciplined physician randomly.”

24. The most comprehensive study to date is the Harvard medical practice study that involved the

review of about 30,000 randomly selected records of patients hospitalized in New York State during

1984. The study found that 1 percent of the hospitalizations involved adverse events caused by

negligence. The study team estimated that during 1984 negligent care provided in New York State

hospitals was responsible for 27,179 injuries, including 6,895 deaths and 877 instances of “permanent

and total disability.” See Troyen A. Brennan et al., “Incidence of Adverse Events and Negligence in
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 35 OEI-01-99-00690

Hospitalized Patients,” The New England Journal of Medicine 324 (February 7, 1991) 6: 370-376.

A subsequent study focusing on the care received by 1,047 hospitalized patients from 1989 through

1992 in a large teaching hospital affiliated with a medical school offered an even more disturbing finding. 

It found that 17.7 percent of the patients received inappropriate care resulting in a serious adverse

event--ranging from temporary disability to death. See Lori B. Andrews et al., “An Alternative

Strategy for Studying Adverse Events in Medical Care,” The Lancet 349 (February 1, 1997) 309-

313.

Finally, a study of a sample of admissions in Utah and Colorado in the early 1990s found that 3.7

percent of the patients experienced an adverse event--an injury caused by medical mismanagement. 

See Helen R. Burstin et al., “Incidence and Types of Adverse Events and Negligent Care in Utah and

Colorado,” Medical Care: (Spring 2000) 261-271.

25. Accounts about dangerous physicians who have caused considerable harm to patients and have

revealed the shortcomings of quality oversight functions regularly appear in television news magazines

and in the popular press. Among the press accounts in recent years are the following: Sandra

Bondman, “What Can You Find Out About Your Doctor?,” Washington Post, (June 8, 1999)

[www.washingtonpost.com/wp-sr...ate/1999-06/08/0591-060899-idx.html,last accessed June 1999];

Jennifer Steinhauer, “Brain Surgeon Cited in Bungled ‘95 Case Faces a New Inquiry,” New York

Times (January 18, 2000); Jennifer Steinhauer, “Surgeon Treated Wrong Side of Two Brains, Albany

Says,” New York Times (March 1, 2000). Jennifer Steinhauer, “Inquiry Creates Doubt Around State

Staten Island Doctor and Hospital,” New York Times (March 19, 2000); Jennifer Steinhauer and

Edward Wong, “How System Let Doctor Under Inquiry Keep Working After Bizarre Act,” New York

Times, January 27, 2000; Susan Rubinowitz and Christine Landon, “Probed Doctors Aren’t Feeling

Too Much Pain,” New York Post (March 5, 2000); Mark McIntire and Jack Dolan, “White Coats

Dark Secrets A Special Report: They Have Killed or Injured Thousands of Patients,” Hartford

Courant, (April 30, 2000) [www.ctnow.com/s...type=article&render=&ck=&ver=hb1.3, last

accessed May 2000]; Mike McIntire, “White Coats Dark Secrets A Special Report: Patients Bleed,

Practice Thrives,” Hartford Courant, (April

30,2000)[www.ctnow.com/s...type=article&render=&ck=&ver=hb1.3, last accessed May 2000];

Jennifer Steinhauer, “Doctor’s License Suspended Over Faulty Mammograms,” New York Times

(June 1, 2000); Jennifer Steinhauer, “Suspended Radiologists Have Troubled Professional Histories,”

New York Times (June 3, 2000); Michael Cooper, “Ex-Doctor is Charged in 3 Patient Deaths,” New

York Times (July 12,2000); and Atul Gawande, “When Good Doctors Go Bad,” New Yorker

Magazine, (August 7, 2000).

26. Some physician practice groups, especially IPAs in California, have begun to implement utilization

reviews, physician credentialing, physician profiling, and other quality assurance (QA) initiatives. While

physician practice groups do engage in such efforts, there is some question as to the effectiveness of

these QA initiatives. For further discussion on the limits of QA in physician practice groups, see Eve A.

Kerr et al., “Quality Assurance in Capitated Physician Groups: Where is the Emphasis?,” Journal of

the American Medical Association 276 (October 16, 1996) 15: 1236-1239; S.R. Weingarten et al.,
APPENDIX C

Managed Care and the Data Bank 36 OEI-01-99-00690

“Evaluation of a Pneumonia Practice Guideline in an Interventional Trial,” American Journal of

Respiratory Critical Care Medicine 153 (1996): 1110-1115; L. M. Lewis, L.C. Lasaster, B.E.

Ruoff, “Failure of a Chest Pain Policy to Modify Physician Evaluation and Management,” Annals of

Emergency Medicine 25 (1995): 9-14; and J.M. Grimshaw and I.T. Russell, “Effect of Clinical

Guidelines on Medical Practice: A Systematic Review of Rigorous Evaluations,” Lancet 342 (1993):

1317-1322. 

27. Recently, at a national meeting of State medical boards, we held a focus group discussion with

representatives of numerous State boards. The discussion focused on the boards’ handling of qualityof-care cases.

28. See Office of Inspector General, Medical Licensure and Discipline: An Overview, June 1986;

State Medical Boards and Medical Discipline, OEI-01-89-00560, August 1990; State Medical

Boards and Medical Discipline: A State-by-State Review, OEI-01-89-00560, August 1990;

Quality Assurance Activities of Medical Licensure Authorities in the United States and Canada,

OEI-01-89-00561, February 1992; Performance Indicators, Annual Reports, and State Medical

Discipline: A State-by-State Review, OEI-89-00563, July 1991; and State Medical Boards and

Quality-of-Care Cases: Promising Approaches, OEI-01-92-00050, June 1997.

For further analysis drawing in large measure on the above reports, see also M.R. Yessian, “State

Medical Boards and Quality Assurance,” Federation Bulletin: The Journal of Medical Licensure

and Discipline 79 (1992) 5: 126-135; M.R. Yessian, “How Can State Medical Boards Compete in

the Quality Assurance Marketplace?,” Federation Bulletin (1994) 2: 102-108; and M.R. Yessian,

“From Self-Regulation to Public Protection: Medical Licensure Authorities in an Age of Rising

Consumerism, Federation Bulletin 81 (1994) 3: 190-194.

29. See for examples: Timothy S. Jost, “Oversight of the Competence of Healthcare Professionals,” in

Regulation of the Healthcare Professions, Timothy S. Jost, ed. (Chicago, Il.: Health Administration

Press, 1997); L.J. Finnochio, C.M. Dower, N.T. Blick, C.M. Gragnola, and the Task Force on Health

Care Workforce Regulation, Strengthening Consumer Protection: Priorities for Health Care

Workforce Regulation (San Francisco, CA.: Pew Health Professions Commission, 1998); and Carl F.

Ameringer, State Medical Boards and the Politics of Public Protection (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1999).

30. Institute of Medicine, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Washington, DC:

National Academy Press, 2000).

31. Ibid., p. 169.

32. Ibid.

33. HRSA supported follow-up inquiries to our prior work on hospital reporting. More recently, it

funded another promising effort exploring ways to improve the dialogue between health care providers

and State licensure boards. Its grant to the Citizen Advocacy Center seeks to foster collaboration
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Managed Care and the Data Bank 37 OEI-01-99-00690

between licensure boards and hospitals in developing remedial, educationally-oriented approaches for

helping practitioners who have knowledge and/or practice deficiencies while at the same time ensuring

that the patients remain adequately protected. 

34. HCFA’s Monitoring Review Guide contains language that calls for MCOs contracting with

Medicare to monitor physicians who are in their network. HCFA’s Quality Improvement System for

Managed Care also has provisions that call for Medicare MCOs to “implement a documented process

for selection and retention of affiliated providers for physicians, including members of physician groups.”

[www.medicare.gov/quality/3AHTM, accessed December 3, 2000]

35. These boards, of course, are State entities under the jurisdiction of the laws and governance of

their individual States. But, because Medicare and Medicaid statutes require that physicians who are

reimbursed under these programs be licensed by the States, the boards also provide an important

service to Federal programs. Under Medicare law, doctors of medicine and osteopathy, dentists,

podiatrists, chiropractors, and optometrists are the six categories of health care professionals defined as

“physicians.”

36. To Err is Human, p. 135.

37. In prior years, the Division of Medicine has provided some funding support to associations

representing State licensing boards to help them improve the performance of the boards. Particularly

notable was its support to the Federation of State Medical Boards for developing a self-assessment

instrument. The effort resulted in a wide array of measures that boards (and others) could use to assess

their performance and to review how they compared with their own performance over time and with

similar boards. Unfortunately, we have learned through our inquiries that the use of this instrument, or

some version of it, does not appear to have taken hold across the States.

38. It is important to note that the Federation of State Medical Boards established a special committee

to address how State boards can do a better job of addressing quality-of-care cases. The committee

produced a report with numerous well-considered recommendations of steps that boards (and State

governments) can take in this regard. See Federation of State Medical Boards, Special Committee on

Evaluation of Quality of Care and Maintenance of Competence, 1998.