What statistical methods are used for profiling providers of medical care?
Statistical methods for profiling providers of medical care include risk adjustment for measuring health care outcomes, use and abuse of practice profiles, systems for comparing actual and predicted mortality rates, use of fixed- and random-effects models for classifying hospitals as mortality outliers, and the public release of hospital and physician mortality data. These methods are discussed in detail in the papers by Schneider et al. (1996), Kassirer (1994), Selker (1993), Austin et al. (2003), Christiansen and Morris (1997), Goldstein and Spiegelhalter (1996), Localio et al. (1997), and Normand and Glickman (1997). Normand and Shahian (2007) also discuss the statistical and clinical aspects of hospital outcomes profiling.  