AllMed Announces Annual Hospital Peer Review Survey Results

PORTLAND, OR – October 30, 2008 – AllMed Healthcare Management announced today the results of its annual Hospital Peer Review Client Satisfaction Survey. The independent review organization (IRO) surveyed about 250 U.S. hospital professionals on their use of AllMed’s external peer review services. The survey included hospitals ranging in size from fewer than 100 beds to more than 500, from across the U.S.
“In seven out of the eight service areas we measured, our hospital peer review clients rated our service as excellent,” said Skip Freedman, M.D., Executive Medical Director. “We believe that strong response shows our value to their quality and patient safety initiatives.”
More than 80 percent of the respondents rated AllMed excellent or above average in these seven categories: overall quality; credentials of peer review specialists; thoroughness; turn-around time; availability of medical staff; responsiveness, and customer service.
“The new 2007 Joint Commission standards broadened the use of peer review and that increased every hospital’s need for external peer review from IROs like AllMed,” said Freedman. “To provide unbiased evaluations, many are turning to IROs, not just to evaluate sentinel events, but to assure quality in credentialing and privileging and to evaluate physician practices more systematically.”
This emphasis on improving the quality of care showed up in the survey: 32 percent of respondents said that their top priorities were in-depth reviews meeting the commission’s focused professional practice evaluation (FPPE), while 36 percent said credentialing and privileging support. When asked about ongoing professional practice evaluations (OPPE), 95 percent said that peer review was their primary source of information and 56 percent said they conducted OPPE at six month or quarterly intervals.
Lacking an in-hospital same specialist (62.7 percent); avoiding potential conflicts of interest (83 percent); and inspecting cases too sensitive for in-house peer reviewers to deliver unbiased evaluations (62 percent) were the main reasons most hospitals use AllMed for external peer review.
Although nearly a quarter of hospitals surveyed use external peer review on sentinel events, more use it for education. According to the survey’s responses, the follow-up actions hospitals take are mainly educational, not punitive. Only 17 percent of respondents use it to sanction doctors compared with 83 percent that use external peer review for educational purposes.
For the second consecutive year, the survey reported that hospitals use peer review to educate doctors through practice area evaluation (52.5 percent) and through ongoing reviews for quality assurance (39 percent). Fifty-eight percent of the respondents felt that external peer review helped improve their doctors’ performance.
About AllMed Healthcare Management
Founded in 1995, AllMed is a URAC-accredited independent review organization (IRO) serving leading hospital groups, ASCs, insurance payers, and medical management firms, nationwide. More than 400 licensed and board-certified physicians actively practicing their specialties conduct AllMed’s evidence-based peer reviews. More information about AllMed can be found on the company’s Web site at www.allmedmd.com.