METHODOLOGY MATTERS - VIII - ELICITING EXPERT OPINION USING THE DELPHI TECHNIQUE - IDENTIFYING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR CARDIOVASCULAR-DISEASE

Combining opinion from expert panels is becoming a more common method of selecting criteria to define quality of health care. The Rand Corpo ration pioneered this method in the 1950s and 1960s in the context of forecasting technological events. Since then, numerous organizations h ave adopted the methodology to develop local and national policy. In t he context of quality of care, opinion is typically elicited from a sa mple of experts regarding the appropriateness or importance of a medic al treatment for several well-defined clinical cohorts. The informatio n from the experts is then combined in order to create a standard or p erformance measure of care. This article describes how to use the pane l process to elicit information from diverse panels of experts. Method s are demonstrated using the data from five distinct panels convened a s part of the Harvard Q-SPAN-CD study, a nationally-funded project who se goal is to identify a set of cardiovascular-related performance mea sures.