As Aligning Forces for Quality Alliances and other communities build on early efforts to share comparative data on health care costs and resource use, it is important to understand the perspective of all stakeholders–including doctors—to ensure everyone perceives the information as credible, valid, and helpful. This document offers a snapshot of physicians’ views on having access to this kind of information themselves and having this information available to the public. The findings are based on individual interviews conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) with seven primary care physicians and obstetrician-gynecologists working in the states where several Alliances are based. (See the Appendix for more information.)

The purpose of these interviews was to learn about physicians’ awareness of and attitudes toward comparative information on provider-level costs and resource use.