Is it possible to evaluate medical service economically by RBRVS survey ?

Abstract

Objective.

To verify the possibility if medical payments can be determined by RBRVS(Resource－Base Relative Value Scales) viewpoint.

Study Design.

1) Ask physicians to evaluate their medical practices from the view of time and work (load) by a questionnaire survey.

2) To investigate the effect of attributes associated with the respondents upon the answers.

3) To analyze the relationship between time and work.

4) To consider if there are more efficient methods to evaluate medical service from RBRVS perspectives other than the questionnaire survey.

Conclusions..

1) The difference in the disciplinary and years of experience of the participated physicians had less influences on answers to the questionnaire.

2) The correlation coefficient between work and time was high in the answers to the questionnaire.

3) The results of the evaluation by mutual consent of a small number of medical specialists resulted in the similar values with those obtained by the questionnaire survey, suggesting that the assessment even by a small number of authorities retains enough representativeness.

These results indicated that medical and technical service payment could be determined from RBRVS perspectives.

The data analysis also revealed the followings:

1) Even the same medical service resulted in huge differences in time and work required, depending on the disease characteristics of the subjects.

2) The current medical fee payment system includes both economically overestimated and underestimated medical services.

These facts would have substantial significances in the future improvement of the medical fee payment system.