National Healthcare Quality Report, 2007

摘要

The quality of health care in this Nation continues to improve at a modest pace. However, the rate of improvement appears to be slowing. The average annual rate of improvement reported across the core measures included in this years fifth annual National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) is 2.3%, based on data spanning 1994 to 2005. An analysis of selected core measures, which cover data from 2000 to 2005, shows that quality has slowed to an annual rate of 1.5%. An important goal of improving health care quality is to reduce variation in care delivery across the country. This means that patients in all States would receive the same level of high quality, appropriate care. Since 2000, on average, variation has decreased across the measures for which the NHQR tracks State data, but this progress is not uniform.