Optimizing quality and service delivery one practice and provider at a time
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We employ evidence-based strategies for directly and systematically observing care with the goal of identifying and introducing opportunities to modify practice behaviors that have measurable implications for patient experience, health care outcomes, and costs.
Measuring Quality and Compliance — The I3PI Difference
Healthcare services are conventionally evaluated with chart reviews and patient completed satisfaction surveys, both of which have significant limitations.
Chart reviews are often not accurate. Studies using undercover standardized patients like ours have shown that physicians deliver 20% more preventive care than they record, and that nearly 40% of physical exam maneuvers in the chart were never actually undertaken. Such errors have major implications for reimbursement, liability, and quality of care.
Patient completed surveys suffer from self-selection bias: Patients who have had bad experiences with staff are less likely to return and therefore their crucial experiences and opinions are less often captured. Those who opt to stay are less inclined to be critical because they become emotionally invested in believing they are getting the best care. As a result, few satisfaction surveys uncover the problems you need to know about.
Finally, neither chart reviews nor patient surveys tell us directly whether physicians communicate well, or when they miss important diagnostic information. Poor communication and listening skills are serious risks for malpractice litigation. Failures to document services delivered can be a major financial loss. Because they identify these problems, unannounced standardized patients have been called the “gold standard” for evaluating performance and compliance.