Evaluation criteria for report cards of healthcare providers

Report cards, performance evaluations, and quality assessments continue to penetrate the lexicon of the healthcare sector. The value of report cards is typically couched as enhancing consumerism among patients, increasing accountability among healthcare providers, and more broadly increasing the transparency of healthcare information. This paper discusses the potential benefits and pitfalls of these performance assessments. This paper briefly reviews empirical evidence regarding the impact of report cards for healthcare providers and synthesizes the role and limitations of these performance measures into distinct evaluation criteria. The rapid proliferation of report cards for healthcare providers suggests a growing need to develop mechanisms and tools to evaluate their impact. The risks associated with utilizing report cards for provider oversight include the deleterious impact on vulnerable populations and a failure to accurately measure quality of care. The capacity to create report cards should not be the sole criterion to develop and utilize report cards to evaluate healthcare providers. Rather, careful consideration of the benefits and risks should accompany the implementation and utilization of report cards into regulatory processes. This report proposes an evaluation checklist by which to assess the role of report cards in a given healthcare context.