Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration

CMHS Consumer Affairs E-News
January 23, 2004, Vol. 04-09

A Series of Two Free Web-assisted Audio Conferences for State, Local, and Health System Policymakers.

Overview and Purpose of the Series

Health system administrators, clinicians, government officials and other stakeholders are focused on making sure that all Americans receive the safest and highest quality health care services possible and that these services are available to them when they are needed. In an important step toward achieving this goal, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) in December 2003. Developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the two reports represent the first national comprehensive effort to measure the quality of health care in America and differences in access to health care services.

These reports emphasize several important messages. The overarching message is that although progress has been made in improving health care in the United States, much remains to be done before high-quality health care is a universal reality for all Americans and disparities are eliminated. The NHQR and NHDR show increases in the screening rates for a variety of conditions including cervical and colorectal cancer. Hospital admissions for uncontrolled diabetes are declining. The number of children receiving immunizations has increased, as have the number of patients receiving beta-blockers following a heart attack. However, too many children are being admitted to the hospital for asthma and rates of admissions for conditions like asthma that are usually treatable with ambulatory care are generally higher for low-income individuals overall. There continues to be poor follow-up of patients who are prescribed medication to treat depression and the death rates from all kinds of cancer remain high among blacks and people of lower socioeconomic status.

Poor quality of care leads to sicker patients, more disabilities, higher costs, and lower confidence in providers and health systems among consumers and private and public purchasers of health care. To be as effective as possible in delivering high-quality health care, efforts must be directed at understanding and synthesizing information on health system performance and translating that information into improved practice.

These reports also deliver the good news that there is great potential to continue improving the quality of health care delivered to all Americans. To achieve this, State and local health policymakers, health system decisionmakers, providers, health plans and employers and other purchasers must have information about and an understanding of:

• Available methods and tools to measure and evaluate quality of health care;
  
• Efforts to provide national benchmarks that individual States, health care systems, health plans and providers can use to assess their performance; and
  
• Promising practices and strategies that have been developed and implemented at the Federal, State, local, and health system level to improve quality of care.

To address these important information needs, AHRQ's User Liaison Program (ULP) is sponsoring two free Web-assisted audio conferences that will examine the issues, methodologies and strategies for improving health quality and implementing quality improvement programs/strategies. They include:

1. Event #1 - Quality Improvement: Tools to Benchmark and Measure Performance Tuesday, February 10, 2004, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. EST.
   
   
2. Event #2 - Using Measurement Data to Improve Quality Wednesday, Febrauary 10, 2004, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. EST.

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The Center for Mental Health Services is a component of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, United States Department of Health and Human Services.