Agency News and Notes

New Web tool provides samples of report cards on health care quality

With rising interest in information about the quality of care delivered by health care providers, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed a new Web tool demonstrating a variety of approaches for health quality report cards. The new Health Care Report Card Compendium is a searchable directory of over 200 samples of report cards produced by a variety of organizations. The samples show formats and approaches for providing comparative information on the quality of health plans, hospitals, medical groups, individual physicians, nursing homes, and other providers of care.

The Health Care Report Card Compendium can be found at http://www.talkingquality.gov/compendium/.

The purpose of the AHRQ Health Care Report Card Compendium is to inform and support the various organizations that develop health care quality reports, to provide easy access to examples of different approaches to content and presentation, and to meet the needs of health services researchers. It also provides related Web sites and sample pages where available.

Public reporting regarding the performance of health care providers and plans is expanding as standards for measuring quality grow, and reports of the quality of health care providers and services are increasingly being made available to consumers. Public reporting about quality of care is also a central feature of Secretary Leavitt's Value-Driven Health Care Initiative.

Last August, President Bush committed Federal health programs to make quality information available to all enrollees. Under Secretary Leavitt's initiative, other private and public employers are likewise committing to quality reporting for enrollees in their health plans, as well as to public reporting on the costs of care.

More information about Secretary Leavitt's Initiative on Value-Driven Health Care is available at http://www.hhs.gov/transparency.

The compendium was developed as a resource for report sponsors to supplement guidance provided on AHRQ's TalkingQuality Web site at http://www.talkingquality.gov. TalkingQuality informs and supports current and potential sponsors of health care performance reports by sharing the lessons learned by researchers and experienced report developers.

This resource was developed by AHRQ's Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems User Network to give sponsors and researchers access to examples of quality reports and to enable them to locate and network with each other on related issues.

AHRQ is providing this compilation of report card samples as a service to report developers, researchers, and other users. AHRQ makes no judgment concerning the effectiveness or value of reports in the compendium but offers them to users for their consideration.

Inclusion of a report in the compendium does not constitute an endorsement of the report in its entirety, or of any element in the report, by AHRQ.

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