Medical Education > Assessing Physicians'
Practice Variation Using Clinical Vignette-based Surveys
Assessing Physicians' Practice Variation
Using Clinical Vignette-based Surveys
For further information contact: jon.veloski@jefferson.edu
This review published in the American Journal of Medical Quality describes
clinical vignette-based surveys, which have been used for over 30 years
to measure variation in physicians' approach to the diagnosis and treatment
of patients with similar health problems.
Vignettes offer advantages over medical record reviews, analysis of
claims data and standardized patients. A vignette-based survey can be
completed more quickly than a record review or standardized patient program.
Research has shown that vignette-based surveys produce better measures
of quality of care than medical record reviews when used to measure differential
diagnosis, selection of tests and treatment decisions.
Although standardized patients are preferred when measuring communication
and physical examination skills, vignettes are more cost-effective than
standardized patients when assessing clinical physicians' decision-making.
Vignettes offer better opportunities to isolate physicians' decision-making
and to control case-mix variation than do analyses of claims data sets.
Clinical vignette-based surveys are simple and economical tools that
can be used to characterize physicians' practice variation.
Reference
J. J. Veloski, S. Tai, A. Evans, and D. B. Nash. Clinical vignette-based
surveys: a tool for assessing physician practice variation. Am J
Med Quality 30 (3):151-157, 2005. |
