Supplementary Table 1
Physicians' Assessments of Care Management Tools by Specialty, 2001

Care management tools include:

• Practice guidelines, which provide treatment recommendations for physicians and other clinicians as they make medical decisions for patients with specific clinical conditions;
• Patient satisfaction surveys, which give physicians feedback on important dimensions of interpersonal communication and service quality; and
• Practice profiling, a computer-generated report comparing the individual physician's treatment patterns and use of medical resources with those of other physicians. Profiles may incorporate comparative results of patient satisfaction surveys and some measures of guideline compliance.

Primary care physicians were more likely than specialists to report that their practice of medicine had been affected by practice guidelines and by practice profiling, and that the overall effect of each of these tools on their efficiency and quality was positive. Among primary care physicians, pediatricians were most likely to report positive effects (finding for practice profiling not statistically significant). Surgeons affected by patient satisfaction surveys were more likely to view them positively than physicians in other medical subspecialties, while those affected by guidelines were less likely to give positive assessments.

¹Percent of physicians reporting care management tool has had a moderate, large or very large effect on their practice of medicine.
²Percent of physicians affected by care management tool reporting the overall effect on the quality and efficiency of their medical practice has been positive.
³Comparison of estimate in asterisked cell(s) * with estimate for physicians in general / family practice is statistically significant at p<.05.
⁴Comparison of estimate for specialists in asterisked cell(s) * with estimate for primary care physicians is statistically significant at p<.05.
⁵Comparison of estimate for surgeons in asterisked cell(s) * with estimate for medical subspecialties is statistically significant at p<.05.
Source: HSC Community Tracking Study Physician Survey