You believe this is because your patients are more severely ill than average. Quality measurement is a reality. Because quality data can be useful for physicians. Quality data may permit health care providers to understand how errors creep into clinical practice, and allow detailed review of all steps involved in providing care.
Physicians are in an excellent position to make a case for improving quality.
If physicians cannot understand, much less lead, the debate about quality in health care, the public may lose confidence in physicians' abilities to serve and protect their patients in the face of health care system changes. By showing leadership, physicians can improve outcomes for patients and retain a measure of autonomy over the practice of medicine. Until recently, physicians could be confident that they alone had the social mandate to judge and manage quality of care. Changes in the medical marketplace have probably had the most significant influence on the increasing prominence of health care quality measurement. As cost containment pressures have increased, quality of care issues have emerged.