Research Brief
The First National Report Card on Quality of Health Care in America
Apr 11, 2006
Results from the CQI Study: Information on Quality at the Community Level Can Stimulate Change Where It Makes the Most Impact on Americans' Health
Published in: Health Affairs, v. 23, no. 3, May/June 2004, p. 247-256
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2004
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Health care quality falls far short of its potential nationally. Because care is delivered locally, improvement strategies should be tailored to community needs. This analysis from the Community Quality Index (CQI) study reports on a comprehensive examination of how effectively care is delivered in twelve metropolitan areas. The authors find room for improvement in quality overall and in dimensions of preventive, acute, and chronic care in all of these communities; no community was consistently best or worst on the various dimensions. Having concrete estimates of the extent of the gap in performance should stimulate community-based quality improvement efforts.
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.