Quality of care is the extent to which all individuals receive the right care, at the right time, every time. RAND has been conducting research on measuring and assessing quality of health care for 40 years, and RAND teams developed many of the quality measures being used around the world today. In 2005, RAND analysts produced the first national report card on quality of care in the United States.
Hospice characteristics associated with strong performance on Hospice Item Set measures differ from those associated with strong performance on CAHPS measures. Providing professional staff visits in the last two days of life is associated with high performance in both quality domains.
Because of the rapid expansion of palliative care as a medical specialty, there has been a growing awareness of and emphasis on the importance of developing quality measures specific to palliative care, especially measures that capture the patient's experience of care. This report summarizes background information on the importance of and need for development of quality measures for palliative care based on patient-reported experience.
Important opportunities exist to improve quality of hospice care in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Quality improvement and regulatory interventions targeting these settings are needed to ensure that all hospice decedents and their family receive high-quality, patient- and family-centered hospice care.
The goal of this study was to explore the types of issues that arise in routine practice in early stage measurement-based care (MBC) implementation.
A composite measure that uses publicly reported data can produce valid, reliable, and stable rankings of quality of ambulatory care.
The RAND Corporation is dedicated to transforming the wellbeing of all people by improving health care systems in the United States and abroad. This book illustrates just some of the many ways that RAND has helped improve policymaking by providing health care decisionmakers, practitioners, and communities with actionable, objective evidence to support their most complex decisions.
The study results help to identify plausible mechanisms of action for the Community Partners in Care interventions for depression and can be used to guide development of future community health engagement interventions and evaluations in under-resourced communities.
This report provides an independent assessment of the breadth, scope, and impact of health services and primary care research funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from FYs 2012 to 2018. The authors identify research gaps and offer recommendations for maximizing the outcomes and value of future investments in health services and primary care research by federal agencies.
Health services research and primary care research portfolios funded by agencies have distinct focus areas, and most overlap is complementary, but there are gaps in research, driven by the complexity and pace of change in the U.S. health system.
A randomized controlled trial in Nigeria evaluated an intervention that paid pregnant women to deliver in a health facility, which led to a 41% increase in facility deliveries. We found improvements in the quality of delivery care and in satisfaction with care.
Some community health centers provide social services on-site and this was associated with better performance on measures of health care quality.
On November 7, 2019, the RAND Corporation convened a Technical Expert Panel (TEP) web meeting to gather input on analyses that could be conducted to further enhance the Medicare Advantage (MA) and Part D Contract Star Ratings program.
We reviewed the literature on best practices for monitoring performance and undertaking activities aimed at improving pediatric patient and family experiences of inpatient care.
Small practice size or not being part of a multi-hospital system are associated with lower use of computerized physician order entry. between 2014 and 2016. Less than optimal use in these environments may be harming patient outcomes.
This study is part of an ongoing effort to discover how and why some health systems in the United States are high performing and others are not.
Early indications suggest that value-based incentives are leading to changes; however, incentives remain small, potentially limiting their effectiveness in driving the significant changes needed to derive large improvements in performance.
The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 mandates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use standardized patient assessment data elements across post-acute care settings. RAND was tasked by CMS with developing and testing the data elements. This report, Volume 1 of a series, summarizes the material presented in the other seven volumes.
The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 mandates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use standardized patient assessment data elements across post-acute care settings. RAND was tasked by CMS with developing and testing the data elements. This report, Volume 3 of a series, provides information about the representativeness of the facility/agency and patient/resident samples used in the study.
The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 mandates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use standardized patient assessment data elements across post-acute care settings. CMS tasked RAND with developing and testing the data elements. This report, Volume 8 of a series, presents test data and interpretations of the results for data elements developed for non-communicative patients.
The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 mandates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use standardized patient assessment data elements across post-acute care settings. RAND was tasked by CMS with developing and testing the data elements. This report, Volume 6 of a series, presents results for data elements in the categories of (1) impairments and (2) special services, treatments, and interventions.
