June 4, 2012
“Abstract: The National Quality Forum (NQF), a private, nonprofit membership organization committed to improving health care quality performance measurement and reporting, was awarded a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a portfolio of quality and efficiency measures. The portfolio of measures would allow the federal government to examine how and whether health care spending is achieving the best results for patients and taxpayers. As part of the scope of work under the HHS contract, NQF was required to conduct an independent evaluation of the uses of NQF-endorsed measures for the purposes of accountability (e.g., public reporting, payment, accreditation, certification) and quality improvement. In September 2010, NQF entered into a contract with the RAND Corporation for RAND to serve as the independent evaluator. This article presents the results of the evaluation study. It describes how performance measures are being used by a wide array of organizations and the types of measures being used for different purposes, summarizes key barriers and facilitators to the use of measures, and identifies opportunities for easing the use of performance measures moving forward.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Quality assessment, Quality improvement | No Comments
June 1, 2012
“Abstract: Benchmarking, a management approach for implementing best practices at best cost, is a recent concept in the healthcare system. The objectives of this paper are to better understand the concept and its evolution in the healthcare sector, to propose an operational definition, and to describe some French and international experiences of benchmarking in the healthcare sector. To this end, we reviewed the literature on this approach’s emergence in the industrial sector, its evolution, its fields of application and examples of how it has been used in the healthcare sector.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Benchmarking, Quality improvement | No Comments
May 31, 2012
READ in Review highlights the top posts on the READ Portal from each month. The following were the five most popular posts from May:
1. A Snapshot of Health Care in Canada as Demonstrated by Top 10 Lists, 2011
“The purpose of this publication is to provide an overview of health care use and resource demands. As questions rise about the sustainability of our health care systems in Canada, it is important to identify what our uses and needs are. By analyzing current health care data, we can ensure resources are being used in the best way possible…”
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Posted in READ Portal, Site News | Tagged with | No Comments
May 30, 2012
“There is growing interest in the systematic assessment and international benchmarking of quality of care provided in different healthcare systems, and major work is under way to support this process through the development and validation of quality indicators that can be used internationally…
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Indicators, Quality assessment | No Comments
May 29, 2012
“What Is This Guide For? How Should It Be Used?
As a health communicator, you craft health and safety messages that can have a profound impact on the public. Using social media, these messages can reach more audiences and have an even greater impact on the public. This Guide aims to assist you in translating your messages so they resonate and are relevant to social media audiences, and encourage action, engagement, and interaction. It is largely tactical, giving you specific ways to write for social media channels.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Information technology, Social media | No Comments
May 28, 2012
“Abstract: The ratio of patients to physicians has long been used as a tool for measuring and planning healthcare resources in Canada. Some current changes in primary care, such as enrolment of patients with physicians, make this ratio easier to calculate, while others, such as changing practice structure, make it more complex to interpret. Based on information gleaned from a review of the literature, we argue that before panel size can be used as an accountability measure for individual physicians or practices in primary care, we must understand its relationship to quality and outcomes at individual and population levels, as well as the contextual factors that affect it.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Canada, Primary health care, Quality assessment, Quality of care | No Comments
May 25, 2012
“KEY MESSAGES:
- The performance of Canada’s primary healthcare (PHC) system lags behind that of other industrialized countries. Well-targeted investments in PHC can improve the health of individuals and populations, which can in turn have a positive impact on macro-economic indicators, such as employment rates, productivity and economic growth.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Economics, Primary health care, Quality improvement | No Comments
May 24, 2012
“The patient-centered medical home has emerged as a promising solution to address the significant fragmentation, poor quality, and high costs that afflict the U.S. health care system. The medical home model includes core components of primary and patient-centered care, recent innovations in practice redesign and health information technology, and changes to the way practices and providers are paid. There are initiatives across the country testing the promise of the medical home model. However, to properly evaluate and compare results that will aid in the implementation of these and other initiatives, researchers need a standard set of core measures. This brief describes the process and recommendations of more than 75 researchers who came together to identify a core set of standardized measures to evaluate the patient-centered medical home. It focuses on two domains of medical home outcomes: cost/utilization and clinical quality.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Indicators, Patient-centered care, Quality assessment, Statistics & numerical data | No Comments
May 23, 2012
“We recommend that health care systems across Canada move actively to provide self-management
supports in a more systematic way. We see four key areas for action:
1) Create an integrated, system-wide approach to self-management support. Current efforts to promote,
deliver, and evaluate self-management support are often fragmented. This report highlights several integrated approaches that we can learn from. Continued progress on the delivery and uptake of self-management support should be monitored against specific health system performance objectives, measures, and targets. Further research in key areas, such as cost-effectiveness and how best to sustain program effects in the longer-term, is also needed.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Chronic disease, Primary health care | No Comments
May 22, 2012
“Background: Emergency department (ED) utilization has dramatically increased in developed countries over the last twenty years. Because it has been associated with adverse outcomes, increased costs, and an overload on the hospital organization, several policies have tried to curb this growing trend. The aim of this study is to systematically review the effectiveness of organizational interventions designed to reduce ED utilization.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Emergency service, Evidence-based, Primary health care | No Comments
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