Measuring Health Care Performance Now, Not Tomorrow
Better data on the quality of health care being delivered in the United States are urgently needed if efforts to reform the nation’s health care system are to succeed.
This paper describes a “distributed data approach” to computing performance results while protecting patients’ privacy. The strategy builds on the efforts of the Quality Alliance Steering Committee, a multistakeholder coalition focused on the implementation of performance measures. Instead of waiting for the government or the private sector to build large data warehouses, existing data from administrative sources, laboratories, clinical registries and electronic health records could be put to greater use now, resulting in improved patient care and spurring further advances in performance measurement. In this article researchers introduce an overall framework for achieving these goals, and describe a set of steps to accelerate and expand the availability of performance measures to improve care now.
April Issue of Health Affairs Focuses on Patient Safety and Health Care Quality
- 1. The Ongoing Quality Improvement Journey
- 2. A Road Map for Improving the Performance of Performance Measures
- 3. The Trade-Off Among Quality, Quantity, and Cost
- 4. 'Global Trigger Tool' Shows that Adverse Events in Hospitals May be Ten Times Greater Than Previously Measured
- 5. Preventing Bloodstream Infections
- 6. Measuring the Performance of Individual Physicians by Collecting Data from Multiple Health Plans
- 7. Measuring Health Care Performance Now, Not Tomorrow
- 8. Despite Improved Quality of Care in the Veterans Affairs Health System, Racial Disparity Persists for Important Clinical Outcomes
- 9. The Importance of Transitional Care in Achieving Health Reform
- 10. An Early Status Report on the Beacon Communities' Plans for Transformation Via Health Information Technology
- 11. A Comparative Study of 11 Local Health Department Organizational Networks
- 12. Public Health Performance
- 13. A Self-Assessment Process for Accreditation Preparedness
- 14. Public Health Delivery Systems
- 15. A Shot in the Rear, Not a Shot in the Dark
- 16. What Predicts Local Public Health Agency Performance Improvement?
- 17. Growth of a Scientific Community of Practice
- 18. Evolution of Coauthorship in Public Health Services and Systems Research
- 19. Resources that May Matter
- 20. Evidence Links Increases in Public Health Spending to Declines in Preventable Deaths
- 21. Public Health Financial Management Competencies
- 22. Decision Science
- 23. Public Health Financial Management Needs
- 24. Data-Driven Management Strategies in Public Health Collaboratives
- 25. Using Geographic Information Systems to Match Local Health Needs with Public Health Services and Programs
- 26. Public Health Systems and Services Research
- 27. Mapping the Multidisciplinary Field of Public Health Services and Systems Research