Data dilemma.(American Medical Group Association, Aventis partnership)(Brief Article)

Business Insurance, March, 2001

When it comes to privacy and medical data, the issues seldom are black and white. That makes a data-gathering venture between the American Medical Group Association and pharmaceutical giant Aventis a cause for both interest and concern. On the surface, the effort to gather data on the treatment provided to millions of patients by thousands of physicians who are AMGA members seems fairly benign.

Improving the quality of patient outcomes certainly will require the gathering of detailed information about how care is delivered. The ability of medical practices to benchmark their practices and outcomes is likely to be a major quality measurement and improvement tool. But the database that AMGA and Aventis are creating will contain sensitive health and insurance...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.