American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality
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The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) began operation in September 1990 as a clearinghouse for adverse action, licensure, and malpractice information in an effort to protect consumers and promote quality in health care. This study analyzed 66,107 and 1291 records of payments made for 50,396 physicians and 1218 nurses, respectively, from 1994 through 1998, to describe characteristics, trends, and risk factors of malpractice payment for physicians and nurses. The median payments, more often settlements paid by insurance companies than judgments in courts of law, were higher for physicians than for nurses. ⋯ Although findings suggested that payment trends remained stable, there was great regional variation in the risk of malpractice payment for both physicians and nurses. The physician risk ranged from a low of 0.73% per physician per year in Alabama to a high of 3.7% in Wyoming, and the nurse risk ranged from a low of 0% per nurse per year in Vermont to a high of 0.075% in the District of Columbia. If the quality of health care provided by physicians and nurses does not vary geographically in the United States, then such a great discrepancy seems to challenge the notion that the risk of malpractice litigation consistently promotes the quality of health care.
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Hospitals use various methods to establish performance benchmarks. This may include cooperative data shared between organizations to allow broad, general comparisons. ⋯ The authors conclude that quality indicators are valuable when screening a hospital, just as we utilize screening tests to identify patients at potential risk. Neither should we apply broad quality indicators as standards of care without a full understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and the foundation on which they are built.