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The Public Advisory Body to the Secretary of Health and Human Services
 

 

Workgroup on Quality

Charge

Informed policies about the most appropriate mechanisms for (1) organizing and financing the delivery of health services and (2) reducing morbidity and mortality and improving quality of life, depend upon access to valid and reliable data about the outcomes of care and services provided by the U.S. health care system. The Workgroup on Quality will address information needs related to assessing and improving the quality of care and services provided by the U.S. health care delivery system, access to those services and outcomes of care.

Work Plan

The work plan for 1999-2001 calls for the Workgroup on Quality to conduct the following activities and analyses:

  1. Address the data needs of state Medicaid agencies to support quality assessment and improvement in the managed care industry and make recommendations for improving those data;
  2. Evaluate the data needs to support quality assessment and improvement, as it relates to the delivery of post-acute care and to the continuum of care and make recommendations for improving those data;
  3. Using those recommendations of the President’s Advisory Commission that are data dependent, review existing health and health-related data systems, and their ability to generate meaningful information about quality of care, across the public and private sectors and for diverse populations. Identify the kinds of data that are most important for assessing and improving quality of care and evaluate access to those data, the quality of those data, and their availability to be used to create measures of quality;
  4. Produce recommendations about the information systems and other data issues related to the creation of a road map for the collection and use of quality of care information and a system that links both public and private data bases to support quality of care measurement.
  5. Integrating with the work of the Subcommittee on Standards and Security and its Workgroup on the Computer-based Patient Record, make recommendations for improving the capabilities of administrative and clinical information systems and vital records to support quality assessment and improvement; and
  6. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of national public and private surveys in meeting data needs for assessing access to and acceptability of health care services and their impact on health status and outcomes in the general population and in specific population and patient subgroups.

Approved February 4, 1999 6-14-99

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