Furthering cost-effective medical practice.

Increased competition among hospitals and new incentives for efficiency in hospital medical practice are promoting hospital managers to become more aggressive and innovative in supervising the clinical processes involved in the delivery of patient care. One of the areas that has recently come under increased scrutiny is that of physician practice patterns. In the hospital, there may be variances in resource use and cost among physicians treating the same disease. Often, these variances appear unnecessary. Managers are looking for ways to encourage physicians to modify their practice patterns to be more efficient and cost effective. This goal creates new issues for hospital managers who are developing approaches to assess and change physician behavior. What these new issues involve and how managers can deal with them is the subject of this article.