Care in U.S. Hospitals --

¶ … Care in U.S. Hospitals -- the Hospital Quality Alliance Program" by K. Ashish, L. Zhonghe, J. Orav and a.M. Epstein, New England Journal of Medicine (2005, July 21), 353, 265-274

Quality assurance (QA) has become an important tool for healthcare organizations of all sizes and types in recent years. The ability of QA programs to benchmark progress and identify problem areas has been a major source of improvements in the quality of care provided by the nation's healthcare system. In fact, the National Committee for Quality Assurance has published annual data concerning the quality of care provided by health plans as measured by quality indicators in the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set for the past decade. Despite this initiative, there was a dearth of comparable data being provided by other healthcare providers that did not allow for national comparisons of quality of care.

This gap was filled by the introduction of a collaborative effort by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Joint Commission, the American Hospital Association, as well as consumer groups including the American Association of Retired Persons termed the "Hospital Quality Alliance" or HQA. Pursuant to the HQA initiatives, tertiary medical facilities across the country now provide quality of care information concerning acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia, among others, to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Prior to the HQA initiative, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as the Joint Commission both collected data on these quality of care indicators; however, in the past, these reports were submitted in different forms making across-the-board comparisons difficult or impossible. As a result of the HQA initiative, though, it is possible to compare these quality of care indicators at the national level.