Measurement & Reporting

Improving Care Through Screening and Public Reporting

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the leading cause of cancer deaths among nonsmokers, according to the CDC. If everyone age 50 years and older had a regular screening test, at least 60 percent of the deaths from this cancer could be avoided. And early detection, the key to treating colorectal cancer, is inexpensive. Two communities in the Robert Wood Johnson’s Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative have made tackling this issue a priority.

...

Sharing Data to Raise the Value of Care

An Oregon health care organization has been working to improve quality and transparency throughout the state by implementing a new public reporting initiative. The Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation, one of RWJF’s Aligning Forces for Quality communities, has been analyzing and reporting claims data from insurers and Medicaid organizations in order to offer consumers, hospitals, and clinics an unbiased comparison of provider ratings.

The data collected now covers about 3.1 million of the state’s 4 million residents, and has helped clinicians identify gaps in...

Looking for a new doctor?

Looking for a new doctor? If you live in Massachusetts, it’s easier than ever with HealthcareCompassMA.org. The new consumer-friendly website makes it simple for patients and their families to compare and select a primary care doctor’s office based on quality and patient experience survey ratings. By empowering health care consumers with transparent information about providers, patients are better able to make important decisions about their own care.

...

Payment Reform Pioneers Deliver on Value

Health care providers are increasingly being paid based on the value of the services they provide instead of the quantity, in the hopes of both improving quality and controlling costs. Aligning Forces for Quality alliances have worked with physicians, hospitals, insurers, employers and other stakeholders to develop and implement systems to measure and publicly report performance.

Journalist Bruce Japsen examines how hospitals and health systems participating in the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality have embraced new payment systems that...

The DOCTOR Project Is...In

How well do the doctors in your community perform when it comes to managing patients' chronic conditions and offering preventive screenings? The DOCTOR Project seeks to find out and let you know.

Launched earlier this year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the DOCTOR Project is a new initiative that will involve 10 communities across the country developing consumer-friendly reports that measure how physicians in that community perform in delivering high-quality health care. The project will be led by MN Community Measurement, the leader of the Minnesota's Aligning...

Improving Transparency in Health Care Costs

The Institute of Medicine estimates that up to 30 percent of the $2 trillion in annual health care spending in the U.S. is duplicative or unnecessary. This includes spending on unproven treatments, ineffective drugs, and unnecessary hospitalizations that can be a burden to both the patient and the provider. Increasing prices for treatments and overall costs also have troublingly little relationship to good health care outcomes. Improving health care and reducing unnecessary treatments requires objective measurements of quality and costs.

...

Green Light on Quality Improvement

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ) has found its strength in quality measurement and public reporting with a natural evolution that has ushered in a complementary focus on improvement. These mechanisms, hand in hand, have led to advancing its mission to increase health care value and improve the health of people in Wisconsin. Essential to these accomplishments are WCHQ members and stakeholders, including health systems, medical groups, hospitals, purchasers, and consumers.

WCHQ has spurred quality improvement...

Evolve: Bringing Data to Life for Healthier Communities

The Data

In 2011, the California Health Care Foundation released a report of surgical rates of 13 procedures for selected hospital services areas (HSAs) across the state. The procedures, which are known to be “preference sensitive,” or “elective,” address conditions that could be treated with various interventions depending on the preference of the doctor and patient. At first glance, it can be difficult to understand what the four years of collected data mean at the local level. However, for longtime veterans of Humboldt County...

Collaborating, Analyzing, and Improving Care in Boston

Is it possible to improve health care quality and reduce costs? The Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative in Greater Boston, operated by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), says the answer is yes—and the Alliance has identified a key starting point.

“An important aspect of improving the quality of Massachusetts’s health care system is to reduce unnecessary care, and one way to do that is to better understand unexplained variations,” said Janice Singer, vice president of programs and...

Safety Net in Greater Cleveland Demonstrates What Is Possible with Medicaid Expansion

The expansion of Medicaid in Ohio was far from certain on February 5, 2013, when CMS granted a waiver that enabled Ohio to move up to 30,000 uninsured adults living in Cuyahoga County into a new health care coverage program called Care Plus. Three safety-net members of Better Health Greater Cleveland viewed the waiver as a testing ground for hoped-for statewide Medicaid expansion, which Ohio’s Governor Kasich ultimately approved in October.

The anchor organization for Care Plus was the county-owned MetroHealth System, Ohio...

Impact