Quality-adjusted Cost Functions for HMOs

这是对健康维护组织(IBIO)作为经济单位的研究。其广泛目标是探索保健组织提供的服务质量的差异如何影响向其成员提供服务的成本。假设质量水平越高，生产成本就越高，但对持续投资于服务质量的组织可能会有财务回报。还假设不同类型的质量度量(过程、结构和结果度量)在卫生管理成本中的重要性程度可能不同。将追求这些研究目标-通过估计质量调整的卫生保健组织成本函数，该函数也将根据病例组合进行调整.由国家质量保证委员会提供的卫生管理组织财务数据的国家数据集，以及由国家质量保证委员会提供的健康计划雇主数据信息集(IEDIS)，是估计卫生管理组织成本函数时使用的主要数据来源。这项研究的结果应该提供有关质量在医疗保健组织行业中的经济作用的重要信息，并洞察不同类型质量措施的经济意义。更广泛地说，这项研究应该为质量在所有类型的医疗保健生产中的经济作用提供洞察力。

This is a study of Health Maintenance Organizations (IBIOs) as economic units. The broad goal is to explore how variations in the quality of services provided by HMOs affect the cost of providing service to their members. It is hypothesized that higher levels of quality will be more costly to produce, but that there may be financial paybacks to organizations that make ongoing investments in service quality. It is also hypothesized that different types of quality measures (process, structure, and outcome measures) may have different levels of importance in HMO costs. These research goals will be pursued-by estimating a quality-adjusted HMO cost function which will also be adjusted for case-mix... A national data set of HMO financial data assembled by HCIA and Healthplan Employers Data Information Set (IEDIS) quality measures supplied by the National Committee for Quality Assurance are the principal data sources to be employed in estimating the HMO cost function. Results of the study should provide important information about the economic role of quality in the HMO industry and insight into the economic significance of different types of quality measures. More generally, this study should provide insights into the economic role of quality in all types of healthcare production.