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.
Journal Article
California's prisons, which are operating under receivership for medical care, need help in improving the quality of health care they provide.
Report
Germany's National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians is looking to develop a unified reimbursement framework that accounts for regional prices and incorporates quality indicators. Research by RAND Europe has informed the development of the quality component of the proposed framework.
Journal Article
Given the high stakes of performance evaluations, statistical benchmarks used in constructed physician profiles should be accompanied by estimates of the benchmarksâ precious.
Journal Article
Longitudinal studies examining care for seriously ill patients are needed to understand patients' experience of illness, evaluate interventions, and improve quality of care. Unfortunately, such studies face substantial methodological challenges. This article describes such challenges and the strategies used to overcome them in a successfully implemented palliative care intervention trial for veterans.
Journal Article
Health care facilities may be prepared to deal with the medical aspects of large-scale disasters but they lack guidelines for managing the psychological aspects of disasters.
Journal Article
This study developed quality measures for diagnosis and management of occupationally associated carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), which should outcomes for patients with this condition.
Journal Article
The use of patient navigators-individuals who perform outreach, coordination, and education across language and cultural barriers-improved breast cancer quality of care in a public hospital and may help reduce disparities in quality of cancer care.
Journal Article
Communication-based interventions may improve experiences and ratings of care for all subgroups, although implementation of these interventions may need to consider preferences associated with race, ethnicity, and language.
Report
As the health care industry, employers, and government officials seek to control the growth of health spending, new efforts are needed to develop and refine quality-of-care and other performance measures that can assure changes will improve medical care and do not harm patients.
News Release
As the health care industry, employers, and government officials seek to control the growth of health spending, new efforts are needed to develop and refine quality-of-care and other performance measures that can assure changes will improve medical care and do not harm patients.
Research Brief
Shares findings on the potential effects of electronic health records (EHRs) on health care quality, based on analysis of extensive data from 2003 and 2006 on EHR adoption, hospital characteristics, and hospital quality in nearly 2,100 hospitals.
Journal Article
Having a usual source of care was associated with lower depression prevalence and higher realized access among community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries.
Journal Article
High Medicare spending is not associated with better health outcomes at a regional level, but patients admitted to California hospitals from 1999 to 2008 had lower inpatient mortality in those hospitals that spent more on end of life care.
Journal Article
Since most poor women deliver at home in developing countries, efforts to reduce maternal deaths should prioritize community-based interventions aimed at making home births safer.
Report
Structured approaches to manage chronic conditions are widely seen as a means to improve the quality and reduce the cost of care for those with chronic disease, but the evidence of such approaches achieving these ends remains uncertain.
Report
This report reviews information systems that report on the quality or performance of providers of healthcare in seven countries to inform the use and further development of quality information systems in the English NHS.
Journal Article
Hispanic seniors, especially if Spanish-preferring and in linguistically isolated areas, are immunized at lower rates than non-Hispanic whites. Physicians and policymakers may be able to help by addressing cultural and linguistic barriers to immunization.
Journal Article
This paper presents the methodology used to develop a comprehensive set of performance indicators in a national evaluation of the mental healthcare delivered by the Veterans Health Administration.
Journal Article
This research brief summaries results of a longitudinal study of military families, which found that spouses and children faced major challenges when one parent was deployed overseas.
Journal Article
Non-invasive breast cancer, or ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), is typically treated with either breast-conserving surgery—with or without follow-up radiation—or mastectomy. Long-term health outcomes depend on the treatments received and the treating surgeon.
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