Aim: Describe the services received by patients over a year.
Example of patients allocated to a specific reference doctor
Left part: Each line represents a patient, with its age and gender. Patients are listed by decreasing annual costs.
Central part: All services are represented proportionally to their costs and the dates of delivery. The months are given on the top of the figure, the weeks on the bottom. All services, including hospitalizations, are reported to provide a complete view for each patient.
Right part: Observed costs (rectangle in grey) and expected ones (vertical black line with horizontal lines providing confidence intervals). Only ambulatory costs are taken into account, since hospitalizations’ costs are beyond the responsibility of reference physicians.
Symbols: The different natures of services use are depicted by different shapes and colors. The nature of the services is independent of the provider. For instance, a visit to a hospital medical doctor is figured by a red circle if the patient received ambulatory care.