This new edition by Lisa Iezzoni examines how risk adjustment controls for the intrinsic health risks that patients bring to their healthcare encounters. For determining costs or comparing clinical outcomes, it thus levels the playing field, ensuring that “apples are compared to apples, not to oranges.”

This new edition is your comprehensive guide to risk adjustment for comparing outcomes of care across different patients, treatments, providers, health plans, or populations. It covers everything from developing risk adjusters to determining data sources to tackling issues related to special populations. A handy reference, it also includes a glossary of common acronyms, and references to websites are found throughout the text, offering additional resources.

New in this edition:

• A chapter that addresses instrumental variables and propensity scores, two techniques increasingly used to address risk adjustment concerns
• Expanded scope beyond hospitals to include examples from outpatient settings, with new sections on pediatrics, mental health, long term care, and care for persons with disabilities
• Assessments of current trends suggesting that risk-adjusted performance information will become more important in the coming years, as calls increase for value-based purchasing