In Jan 2013 there was a report in the NEJM about aspirin prophylaxis in ischemic vascular disease to prevent heart attacks and strokes.(1) The data came from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of the CDC. Patients seeing cardiologists were prescribed aspirin 46.9% of the time. Patients seeing primary care were prescribed aspirin 34.8% of the time.
Better Health Greater Cleveland was recently featured in Family Practice News.
A team of researchers led by Dr. Geoffrey Lamb, MD, professor of internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, published their findings on the efficacy of public reporting of quality-of-care measures in the March 2013 edition of Health Affairs. The researchers analyzed 14 publicly reported quality-of-care measures from 2004 to 2009 from the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), leader of the AF4Q initiative in Wisconsin. The team examined data from seventeen physician groups, which represented 409 clinics. Dr. Lamb’s team found that physician groups in the...
Finding information about the quality of the health care offered in your community is hard. Aligning Forces for Quality communities are blazing new trails, making this information more readily available and easier to understand in publicly available reports. These reports help physicians and hospitals identify areas for improvement, guide consumers’ decisions in choosing high-quality providers, and offer employers and insurers objective information on the quality of care being delivered. Three AF4Q communities—Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Minnesota—worked with ...
October’s issue of Consumer Reports included a special insert of Consumer Reports Health which featured the great measurement and reporting work at MN Community Measurement (MNCM). Covering 552 Minnesota physician group practices, the project studied patient results in cardiovascular disease and diabetes, two of the deadliest chronic diseases.
Physician groups were scored on the percentage of patients who achieve all of the targets for the best management of each condition. For cardiovascular disease, that required appropriate blood pressure , level of...
The Puget Sound Health Alliance (PSHA), a member of Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), has opened the New Year with a series of exciting events including the unveiling of its new public reporting website and the release of its second comprehensive medical group survey.
“If we knew then what we know now...”
In the past, physicians in the Kansas City area didn’t have an easy way to validate the accuracy of the data from their electronic medical record (EMR) systems. The Kansas
Publishing information about how patients experience the care they receive at their doctor’s office is one way to increase physician accountability and drive public awareness about health care quality. That was what Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) had in mind when it participated in a pilot project with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. The result? In June 2012, Consumer Reports published its first patient experience ratings for nearly 500 primary care physician practices in Massachusetts, expanding the reach of this...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week announced the first three participants in a program designed to bolster the availability of information about local doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers.