In this article we report on the perceptions of health care providers concerning the use of health care outcomes. These perceptions were identified during two afternoon workshops at the symposium on outcomes data held in Keystone, Colorado, in June 1994. The overall goal of these workshops was to explore the potential use of outcomes data within the clinical practice setting. The attitudes and concerns of several key providers formed the framework for the workshop discussions. The strengths and weaknesses associated with using risk-adjusted outcomes data, both to assess and to improve quality of patient care, were debated within the workshop groups. Overall, conference participants agreed that the risk-adjusted outcomes of cardiac care could be used both to assess and to improve the quality of patient care. The research to date, however, represents only a first step toward this goal. The meeting participants challenged the research community to improve on the measures currently available, with the goal of providing clinicians better information to improve the "art" of medicine.