Quality-adjusted Cost Functions for HMOs

这是一项以健康维护组织（IBIOs）为经济单位的研究。广泛的目标是探索卫生保健组织提供的服务质量的变化如何影响向其成员提供服务的成本。据推测，更高水平的服务质量的生产成本将更高，但对持续投资于服务质量的组织可能会有财务回报。我们还假设，不同类型的质量测量（过程、结构和结果测量）在HMO成本中可能具有不同的重要性。这些研究目标将通过估计经过质量调整的HMO成本函数来实现，该函数也将根据病例组合进行调整……由HCIA汇编的HMO财务数据的国家数据集和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）质量措施是用于估计HMO成本函数的主要数据源。本研究的结果应提供关于质量在HMO行业中的经济作用的重要信息，并洞察不同类型的质量措施的经济意义。更一般地说，这项研究应该提供洞察质量在所有类型的医疗保健生产的经济作用。

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.