AHRQ reports continued gains in health care quality

Health care quality is improving overall, especially in hospitals, and more people have health care coverage and a usual source of medical care since the Affordable Care Act took effect, according to a new report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The report combines the agency’s annual health care quality and disparities reports with an update on the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Quality Strategy, which shows progress on all NQS priorities. For example, with respect to the NQS priority for effective treatment, the report notes, “Since CMS began publicly reporting measures of hospital quality on the Hospital Compare Web site in 2005, these measures dominated the list of effective treatment measures tracked in this report. In the last several reports, many [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] measures achieved overall performance levels of 95% or better and were dropped from the report. The remaining measures of effective treatment have also done well, with about 60% showing improvement. Moreover, disparities are less common than in many other priorities; of these disparities, about 45% were getting smaller over time.”