The gap between the care patients should get and what they actually receive likely contributes to thousands of preventable deaths each year, and health care systems worldwide continue to face the challenge of delivering quality care at an affordable cost. RAND has conducted research designed to measure and improve health care quality and to provide reliable decision support data to patients, providers, and purchasers.
Commentary
There are proposals to have England's National Health Service offer non-emergency service on weekends. Since there is a strong association between the health and well-being of staff and the quality of patient care, 24/7 working could have unintended consequences for patients.
Report
To support the English Department of Health's Academic Health Science Centres competition in 2013, RAND Europe has analysed various types of publicly available data and quality assessments in the domains of medical research and health education.
Report
This history looks at how humanity has cared for its war casualties and veterans, from ancient times through the aftermath of World War II.
Journal Article
Ongoing efforts to profile physicians on their relative cost of care have been criticized because they do not account for differences in patients' socioeconomic status (SES).
Journal Article
A team from RAND and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) developed a toolkit to help hospitals enhance their quality improvement efforts using quality indicators from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Journal Article
In this chapter, we present the PBOA instruments that have been used to determine outcomes in acupuncture clinical research, and highlight measures that are feasible, practical, economical, reliable, valid, and responsive to clinical change.
Journal Article
The objective of this study was to describe our experience in reducing quality-of-care disparities among Puerto Rican children with asthma by adapting 2 existing evidence-based asthma interventions.
Journal Article
Providing care in groups, using non-face-to-face formats, and adding a developmental specialist can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of well-child care.
Journal Article
Patients used kiosks in mental health clinics to provide routine data on clinical status and treatments. The data were used to improve quality of care.
Journal Article
The purpose of this updated review is to reassess the benefits and harms of fall prevention programs in acute care settings and to identify factors associated with successful implementation of these programs.
Journal Article
This paper describes the first phase of a three-phase effort to conduct an evidence-based assessment of patient safety strategies. The paper describes a framework for reviewing existing studies and prospectively evaluating new studies of the implementation of patient safety practices.
Journal Article
A small percentage of patients die during hospitalization or shortly thereafter, and it is widely believed that more or better nursing care could prevent some of these deaths.
Journal Article
The authors redesigned an electronic clinical reminder to improve identification and management of Veterans at high risk for falls, and piloted the reminder in 3 Veterans Health Administration community-based outpatient clinics.
Journal Article
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality commissioned a team to reexamine the evidence behind key patient safety strategies (PSSs).
Journal Article
Simulated patient, or so-called mystery-shopper, studies are a controversial, but potentially useful, approach to take when conducting health services research.
Journal Article
This report aims to contribute to the understanding of how changing relationships impacts on the quality of care.
Report
Public and private sector purchasers are actively working to design value-based payment programs to achieve the goals of improved quality and more efficient use of health care resources. How these programs are designed is a complex undertaking and one that will determine the likelihood of their success.
Commentary
While the current state of the evidence does not provide clear guidance to policymakers seeking to address the twin pillars of health care quality and cost, it is apparent that researchers must produce more detailed data on how to reduce health care spending while improving quality, writes Peter Hussey.
Report
California health regulators should begin collecting physician identifiers as part of their routine data collection efforts about the services provided at the state's hospitals. Such a move would help providers improve quality by aiding efforts to benchmark performance and reduce variations in the delivery of care.
News Release
California health regulators should begin collecting physician identifiers as part of their routine data collection efforts about the services provided at the state's hospitals. Such a move would help providers improve quality by aiding efforts to benchmark performance and reduce variations in the delivery of care.
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2013 RAND Corporation.