healthcare quality

Washington state insurers have begun to give members more information on healthcare quality and costs, as well as what their neighbors think of local providers. Regence BlueShield, for example, will... Read more...

A coalition of influential healthcare groups including the National Quality Forum and America's Health Insurance Plans have come together to create a single, consistent national approach to quality... Read more...

> Health plans have made strides in gathering and publishing healthcare quality data and prices, but still have a ways to go, according to one employer-related trade group. Read more...

The state of Nevada has passed a new law which requires hospitals to submit quality and cost information to state officials. The information, which will include average lengths of stay and average charges for the top 50 diagnoses, will be posted on a Web site by 2009. While the Nevada Hospital Association already shares data on its members' prices, it hasn't posted quality of care information. Nevada follows several other states which have …

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As readers know, there's far too many ways to present healthcare quality data, a state of affairs which has created confusion among both providers and consumers. To help resolve these differences HHS has released a Website outlining different approaches to quality reporting. Article

To date, virtually all of the major studies of healthcare quality have focused on care for adults, partly because children aren't prone to chronic diseases like diabetes whose outcomes can be measured easily. The gap in quality measures is particularly large when it comes to inpatient care, according to a study by the National Association of Children's Hospitals. However, a new bill being considered in the Senate would change the equation, budgeting $100 million over the next five years …

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New research by healthcare quality measurement firm Press Ganey Associates has concluded that patients' perceptions of U.S. hospitals improved slightly last year, despite some entrenched complaints which don't seem to be going away over time. Patients gave hospitals an overall rating of 84.2 out of 100 points, up 1.2 points from five years ago. At the same time, however, patients continue to be dissatisfied with room conditions, food quality and problems in the discharge …

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Right now, either hospital medical records departments or medical group practice administrators typically end up collecting quality data, a costly and time-consuming exercise which only gets more taxing from year to year as health plans, state and federal regulators demand more. According to a new study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the right information technology could ease the strain, but only if all of the stakeholders agree on common data standards. In the …

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>  Like several other healthcare systems, Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System has partnered with a retail clinic operator, MedBasics, to offer physician oversight for the clinics. Report

> Several large employers, including Accenture, General Mills and 3M, came together this week to promise that they'll collect (and share) healthcare quality information. …

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HHS is taking its efforts to foster the use of quality data to a new level. The agency announced yesterday that as part of its efforts to make quality information readily available, it was planning to create local groups which would share health quality data for a region.

These "value exchanges," which would include doctors, nurses, hospitals and health systems, health plans, employers and unions, would be run by existing regional health collaboratives. The groups ultimately share …

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