Newark Information Sharing Project: lessons for Medical Audit Advisory Groups.

This article describes one method of professional performance review which relies heavily on confidentiality and comparability. For the Newark Information Sharing Project, an association of five practices collected data for two years on registrations, workload, prevention, referrals, prescribing, and disease prevalence. After central collation, the averages and ranges were returned to the individual practices with their position confidentially indicated. Unlike previous reports of inter-practice comparisons, this project involved no research funds or special assistance. The time and financial costs are quantified. This model is suitable for adoption by Medical Audit Advisory Groups.