Routine Individual Feedback on Requests for Diagnostic Tests

Ron A.G. Winkens, André J.H.A. Ament, Peter Pop, Peter H.A. Reniers, Richard P.T.M. Grol and André J. Knottnerus

Medical Decision Making, 1996, vol. 16, issue 4, 309-314

Abstract: The authors assessed the economic consequences of routine individual feedback on test requests provided to 85 family physicians in a region with 187,000 inhabitants. In a retrospective study as part of a quasi-experiment, cost trends in a region where feedback was provided over a seven-year period were compared with cost trends elsewhere in The Netherlands without feedback. Data on variable costs were obtained for 400 individual tests that accounted for 90% of all requests. Differences in request trends thus were transformed to savings in costs of diagnostic testing, taking account of the extra costs of providing the feedback. Expenditures for diagnostic testing de clined after the start of the feedback, despite the costs of providing the feedback. The savings increased as the feedback continued. Compared with the trend elsewhere without feedback, over seven years a total net sum of 1.4 million U.S. dollars was saved. Routine individual feedback is therefore economically worthwhile. Key words: economic evaluation; feedback; diagnostic testing; quality assurance; cost contain ment. (Med Decis Making 1996;16:309-314)

Date: 1996
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X9601600401 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:16:y:1996:i:4:p:309-314

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9601600401

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Medical Decision Making
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().