NCQA: Healthcare quality improvement stalls

After more than a decade of improvement, healthcare quality remained flat in 2008, particularly in the mental health and substance abuse arena, according to an annual report by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

The report notes that while there were some improvements, including more consistency in delivering flu shots and keeping heart attack patients on beta blocker meds, other measures actually suggested declines in quality (notably in in diabetes care, overuse of imaging for lower back pain and breast cancer screening). Mental health and substance abuse treatment showed many gaps in quality, including:

* Only 46.4 percent of people taking anti-depressant drugs were being monitored by their doctors. 

* About one-third of children prescribed ADHD meds were seeing a doctor for a follow-up.

* Just half of patients previously hospitalized for mental illness saw a physician for follow-up visits.

* Just 42.6 percent of patients with alcohol or drug addictions entered into treatment.

In another sign of quality problems, performance of health plans serving Medicare and Medicaid patients failed to improve on key quality measures, the group concluded. For example, among Medicare Advantage plans, only five of 36 measures showed meaningful  improvement, and in Medicaid, while 18 of 50 measures (36 percent) showed a statistically significant gain, the gains were minor.

To learn more about the report:
- read this NCQA press release

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