Research Focus: Health care quality

While data and measurement can be effective tools to better standardize and improve care for patients, critics point to the volume of measures hospitals and providers are asked to complete as well as flawed underlying formulas for some of the more complex measures.

Further, Medicare has several programs that reward hospitals and providers based on results from their measurements which proves problematic when these measures are flawed (The JKTG Foundation’s executive vice president for research and policy, J. Graham Atkinson, D. Phil., has written extensively on this subject. Articles listed below).

The JKTG Foundation believes we must approach quality improvement in an unbiased, honest way. Rather than accept the status quo, current systems should be questioned: Is this the best approach? Is there a way to do things better? Only then will the U.S. have the health care system it deserves.

Resources on health care quality:

Measuring the quality of health care in the US: Why we are failing and what we can do about it | JKTG Foundation

Types of health care quality measures | Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The need to simplify measuring quality | The JAMA Forum

Quality Measures Q&A | American Academy of Family Physicians

*Composite measures of health care provider performance: a description of approaches | The Milbank Quarterly

**An analysis of the Medicare hospital 5-star rating and a comparison with quality penalties | JKTG Foundation

**Problematic risk adjustment in national healthcare safety network measures | American Journal of Medical Quality

**Are we confident of across-hospital mortality comparisons? | American Journal of Medical Quality

*Study funded by JKTG Foundation
**Co-authored by J. Graham Atkinson, D. Phil., executive vice president for research and policy