Medicare: Enhancing Health Care Quality Assurance (Testimony, 07/27/95,
GAO/T-HEHS-95-224).

As efforts to contain health care costs have intensified in recent
years, more attention has been paid to the quality of that care.
Corporate purchasers of health care are concerned about problems that
may arise from restricting patients' choice of providers or from giving
providers financial incentives that encourage them to withhold or limit
needed care, or, conversely, might encourage them to overtreat.  By
evaluating both cost and quality, these purchasers believe that they can
select the plan that provides the best value. This testimony discusses
(1) what the Health Care Financing Administration is doing to ensure
that Medicare providers furnish quality care in both fee-for-service and
managed care deliver systems and (2) experts' views on essential quality
assurance components.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-HEHS-95-224
     TITLE:  Medicare: Enhancing Health Care Quality Assurance
      DATE:  07/27/95
   SUBJECT:  Quality assurance
             Medicare programs
             Health maintenance organizations
             Beneficiaries
             Health services administration
             Health care cost control
             Surveys
             Physicians
IDENTIFIER:  Medicare Peer Review Program
             Medicare Provider Certification Program
             Florida
             
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