Earlier ranking attempts proved to be misleading.

The ongoing dispute between doctors and insurers over how health plans grade patient care is finally coming to a halt. Both parties are now working together to create national standards that will measure physician performance, according to a news brief from The New York Times.

Insurers’ ranking efforts have been controversial as physicians complain that these rankings are based too much on cost and not enough on quality of care. Physicians also feel that these rankings are inaccurate, according to the news brief.

Officials in several states are looking into the issue. For example, the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, conducted an investigation of some the rankings and reached an agreement with several insurers on how they would go forward with their rankings.

‘There has been a hodgepodge of measures that patients don’t know if they can rely on and doctors certainly don’t trust,’ said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of health policy of the Pacific Business Group on Health.

This agreement to create a national set of standards allows physicians and insurers to bury the hatchet, find common ground and reach a compromise. Major physician groups, including the American Medical Association  and the American College of Surgeons will be joining the nation’s major health insurers, including Aetna and UnitedHealth.

In addition, insurers report that they will allow independent parties to review their rankings, the news brief states. Insurers have agreed to abide by the standards and base their rankings on both cost and quality of care that physicians provide to their patients.

Employers and labor and consumer groups led efforts to resolve disputes between physicians and insurers and are also supporting these standards.

This new agreement between physicians and insurers has the potential of ending a conflict that has prevented development of standard criteria in the past, said Nancy Nielsen, MD, PhD, president-elect of the AMA. ‘It is perhaps a first step to get beyond the finger pointing in the health care system,’ Nielsen said in the news brief.

Lee agreed. ‘We’re all better off if doctors, health plans and patients aren’t at each other’s throats,’ he said.