Both nationally and at the state level, the terms “quality” and “cost efficiency” have become synonymous with health care. And the Wisconsin Medical Society is committed to ensuring that physicians are leading these initiatives. So when we asked physicians what the Society could do to help with quality improvement efforts in Wisconsin, they suggested the following:

• Work to help standardize and coalesce state quality efforts
• Help physicians embrace, engage and lead quality and cost efficiency efforts
• Promote practice-level quality improvement
• Create an entry point for smaller practices and individual physicians to get involved
• Use knowledge gained to fundamentally change the health care system to increase insurance coverage and quality of care for all

As a first step toward achieving these goals, the Society has developed DRconnection. DRconnection is a central repository of complete physician demographic data that includes information about contractual relationships among physicians, clinics, hospitals and more. Physicians can easily update their own data and verify its accuracy on an ongoing basis. The information will be used to support:

• state quality improvement efforts;
• workforce planning
• administrative simplification by making it easier for physicians to maintain and transfer their own information to hospitals, clinics, state government, health plans and other relevant entities
• an on-line physician directory that is accessible by the public as a source for physician practice information.

This is just the first step toward promoting practice-level quality improvement that ultimately will lead to real change in our health care system. Bookmark this page for more information as these efforts unfold.