MHA Press Room

Poll: Much of public not using health care quality information

Only 30% of Americans saw information this year comparing the quality of health plans, hospitals or doctors, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll. About 22% said they saw information comparing the quality of health plans, 20% the quality of hospitals and 12% the quality of doctors. About half as many reported using the information. Just 6% of Americans had heard of the Hospital Compare Web site.

More on the survey can be found online.

Consumers unsure which hospital in their area offers the best quality of care

Although faced with increased public transparency and access to healthcare data, consumers are not any more knowledgeable about area hospitals and health care services than they were a few years ago, according to recent telephone survey of 1,000 households conducted by PRC. More than one-third (38.6%) of consumers nationwide are unsure which hospital provides the best quality of care.

Only 8.9% of consumers are aware of the Hospital Compare website, and only 21.7% of those consumers (1.93% of the nation’s consumers total) have accessed it. Consumers’ perceptions of their local hospitals have remained basically static over the last few years, with two-thirds saying their hospitals have “remained the same.”

Download the National Consumer Perception Study report from Professional Research Consultants.

AHRQ issues health care performance data by state

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on March 26 issued its annual “state snapshots” summarizing data on health care quality by state. Based on data from the agency’s 2007 National Healthcare Quality Report, the snapshots summarize state performance by health care setting and type of care, and rank the states on 15 measures ranging from cancer deaths, vaccination and prenatal care rates to recommended heart attack care.

New to the snapshots this year are data on state health status and progress toward the Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2010 health goals.

Mississippi's snapshot information is here.

Report: Health care quality improving

The quality of medical care of more than 80 million insured Americans enrolled in 767 health plans improved in 2006, according to a recent report by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

The data collected by the organization shows that commercial health plans posted improvements in 30 of 44 quality care measures such as childhood immunizations and colorectal cancer screening. Medicaid plans also improved in 34 of 43 measures.

However, the committee's research shows that health plans participating in Medicare lagged behind for the second year in a row, improving only in 7 of the 21 measures.

[ via The Orlando Business Journal ]

Scorecard ranks states on health care access, cost, quality

Health system performance varies widely across states, according to a scorecard released June 13 by a Commonwealth Fund commission. The state scorecard assesses health system performance on 32 measures of access and quality, avoidable hospital use and costs, equity and healthy lives.

If all states performed as well as the top quartile, the panel estimates the nation annually would save billions of dollars and have 90,000 fewer deaths under age 75 from preventable conditions and half as many uninsured people. To improve performance across states, the commission calls for universal health coverage, more information on practices and policies that contribute to high or varying performance, and national leadership and collaboration across public and private sectors.

[ via AHA News Now ]

State quality snapshots released

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on June 11 updated its State Snapshots Web tool based on data from its 2006 National Healthcare Quality Report. The data draws on 129 quality measures from various sources, and includes state rankings for a subset of 15 measures chosen to represent a broad range of common diseases.

The snapshots provide summaries by type of care, care setting and clinical area, and users can view whether a state has improved in a particular area and how it compares to other states. The tool includes a section on diabetes care and a table containing all the measures for every state.

[ via AHA News Now ]

Report sees benefits, barriers to quality and price transparency

Efforts to expand the availability of transparent quality and price information hold out the prospect of increasing accountability, quality and efficiency in health care, but substantial barriers will need to be overcome before such information is more readily available, a report from the Commonwealth Fund concludes. Among other challenges, the report says price and cost data “are obscured by the Byzantine nature of the financing system.

Even when financial and quality data are collected, there are significant challenges in making the information comparable across providers and plans and comprehensible to the various audiences, including patients and consumers.” Notwithstanding these challenges, the report calls the movement to greater transparency “inexorable,” and says governments can support the infrastructure for public reporting through data interoperability standards, disclosure of performance data for government health programs, and collaboration with regional and national efforts in the private sector.

[ via AHA News Now ]

U.S. health care quality continues to improve, AHRQ reports

The overall quality of the U.S. health care system continues to improve, but prevention strategies lag behind other gains, according to annual reports on health care quality and disparities released Jan. 11 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The greatest quality gains occurred in hospitals, where performance on the report’s quality measures improved 7.8%.

Hospital care for heart attack and pneumonia patients improved 15% and 11.7%, respectively, while steps to avoid complications after surgery improved 7.3%. Analysts attributed the improvement to initiatives such as the Hospital Quality Alliance.

Outpatient care improved by 3.2%, and nursing home and home health care by 1%, the agency said. Access to care varied widely between racial, ethnic and economic groups, particularly in the area of prevention.

Just 52% of all U.S. adults receive recommended colorectal cancer screenings, while less than half of obese adults are counseled about diet by health care professionals. “Much more can be done to prevent illness from occurring or progressing,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn Clancy, M.D.

[ via AHA News Now ]

CMS to start sharing heart data with hospitals

CMS this month will start sharing with hospitals performance data on heart attack and heart failure mortality, the American Hospital Association (AHA) reported on its Web site this week.

In December, the agency will send each hospital a private, individualized report of its specific performance through a secure quality exchange Web site. Hospitals will then have a 30-day period to ask CMS questions about their reported data, the AHA online story said.

The AHA plans to organize conference calls with the CMS team assembling the data so that hospitals can ask questions directly. The data will be publicly posted starting in 2007.

Click here for more information.

[ via Quality Improvement Monitor ]

More than half of nation’s HMOs use pay-for-performance in provider contracts

More than half of the nation’s HMOs (52%) used pay-for-performance programs in their contracts with health care providers in 2005, according to a study in the Nov. 2 New England Journal of Medicine. Nearly 90% of the HMOs had pay-for-performance programs for physicians while 38% had programs for hospitals, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School in Boston found.

Up to 35% of the hospital programs included measures specified by the Leapfrog Group while the rest used other quality measures. Common clinical measures for physicians included diabetes care, mammography and asthma medication.

Use of information technology and measures of patient satisfaction also were relatively common measures for physicians paid using capitation. Health plans that require members to designate a primary care physician were more likely to use pay-for-performance programs than others. Payment incentives also were more common for medical groups than for individual physicians.

[ via AHA News Now ]