Health care providers are under increasing pressure to document their outcomes to managed care organizations, employers and consumers. Performance measurement has become an important tool to demonstrate the value of disease state management and provider performance improvement programs. Providing feedback to physicians in the form of performance reports with appropriate benchmarks increases the likelihood of physician improvement. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this project was to develop a simple and practical tool to evaluate performance of individual physicians and clinics in a large physician practice management organization. METHODS: Clinical, economic (RVUs), and relational outcomes were summarized and trended over time. Clinical outcomes examined both general and disease-specific (diabetes and asthma) endpoints. Relational outcomes included patient reported disease specific satisfaction, quality of life, and educational initiatives. Disease-specific clinical outcomes were compared to nationally developed and accepted practice guidelines. An extensive literature review on profiling and risk adjustment was also conducted to help develop format and layout of the profiles. RESULTS: Several informative, easy-to-read reports were developed to measure provider/disease-specific clinical outcomes, provider/disease specific satisfaction, and provider-specific economic outcomes. Provider profiles were actionable, derived from practice guidelines, minimally intrusive, and relevant. The profiles measured the performance of each provider against the overall performance of his/her clinic and against the physician practice management organization. CONCLUSION: The development of provider profiles that summarize the critical elements essential for managing patient care is a practical way to evaluate provider performance against nationally recognized standards with minimal data collection burden. Profiles can provide valuable information to physicians about their own performance, as well as to managed care organizations and consumers interested in provider-specific outcome measures.