Physician profiling using data envelopment analysis: a case study

As an alternative to existing physician profiling methods, we used DEA to evaluate the efficiency of primary care physicians from a managed care organisation. Taking a case study approach, we discuss how data collected by this organisation regarding resource utilisation, cost, and quality can be used in various DEA models to determine physician efficiency. We consider several decisions regarding the selection of the DEA models and data to be used in these models. We introduce a "guided stepwise" method to determine a small, but relevant, set of input and output variables. Physicians were analysed on the basis of both in-patient and out-patient performance. DEA not only provided measures of physician efficiency, but also identified a small set of reference groups to serve as role models for non-efficient physicians.