Healthcare Management

Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports

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As the United States continues to devote extensive resources toward achieving a high-value, high-quality health care system, the capacity to evaluate the state of care is increasingly important. Since 2003, the annual publication of the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has played an important role in documenting trend data on the state of health care quality and disparities. The general message from the most recent reports is that while some areas have improved, the overall quality of health care in the United States is suboptimal. Across all of the process of care measures tracked in the NHQR, persons received the recommended care less than 60 percent of the time.1 Furthermore, even when quality has improved on a measure tracked in the NHQR, disparities in care often persist across socioeconomic groups, racial and ethnic groups, and geographic areas (AHRQ, 2009a,b). AHRQ asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review past NHQRs and NHDRs and provide a vision so that the reports can contribute to advancing the quality of health care for all persons in the United States. The IOM formed the Committee on Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports to address this task. Through its research and deliberations, the Future Directions committee concluded that while the reports alone will not improve the quality of health care, they can make a compelling case for closing the gap between current performance levels and recommended standards of care. The committee recommends that AHRQ:

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

: ., 2010

Collation

1-247

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-0-309-14985-3

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Edition

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Subject(s)

Future Directions for the National Healthcare Qual

Specific Detail Info

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