Disclosure of physician incentives: Do practices satisfy purposes? Health plans disclose information to consumers for both legal and educational reasons, and some tension exists between the two.

Under legal pressure, discussion has quickly shifted from whether health pl ans should disclose how they pay their physicians to how, when, and what sh ould be disclosed and by whom. This paper describes health plans' disclosur e practices and evaluates their adequacy and likely impact. It begins by ex plaining how different reasons for disclosure alter the form and content of disclosure, illustrating these approaches with actual examples. The paper concludes with a recommended approach that attempts to layer and stage disc losures so that people have as much information as they want, when they nee d it.